Conscientious Objections to Pathological Liars

Literary contrarian Kurt Vonnegut calls leaders of our current dysfunctional government psychopathic personalities or PPs, "the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences."

The author of "A Man Without a Country" is right about these People Without a Conscience.

"What syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them?" Vonnegut wrote. "They are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires."

And they still haven't brought Osama bin Laden to justice.

By the way the Bush administration deceived Congress, lied to the American people about domestic spying and anything and everything about the Iraq war, I'm inclined to believe that Vonnegut was onto something.

The Bushvolk may always be wrong, but are seldom in doubt. They do what they do, no matter how immoral, stupid, wrong or unlawful, because they believe they are right. They do it because they can.

Even members of Congress, who should know better, continue to be stunned by the administration's audacity, arrogance and depravity.

Recently the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded the White House hand over two secret memos from the Justice Department in 2005 that authorized the CIA to use harsh interrogation methods the White House claimed it did not condone. As usual, Alberto Gonzales' fingerprints are all over this scandal.

The committee wants to know why methods the White House and Justice Department called "abhorrent" in 2004 were in practice in 2005. The memos were made public by The New York Times.

"After telling us and the world that torture is abhorrent," said Chairman Patrick Leahy of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "it appears that under Attorney General Gonzales, they reversed themselves and reinstated a secret regime by, in essence, reinterpreting the law in secret."

How many scandals, broken laws and dead troops do we need before we realize, as Vonnegut did in 2005, that these people really "don't give a (expletive deleted) what happens next?"

Rush Limbaugh whined about "phony soldiers" who criticize the war.

What about the phony patriots who sacrifice our troops in foreign wars and jeopardize international relations over oil?

If the Bushvolk seem incapable of telling the truth, perhaps it is because they are congenital liars.

"Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever," Vonnegut wrote. "This book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These are people born without consciences, and suddenly they are in charge of everything."

No matter how often this administration gets taken to the Capitol Hill woodshed, it still doesn't get the history lesson about abuse of power. Neither do we, or we would have demanded impeachment and our country back long ago.

This administration is hypnotized by its hubris. We, however, are manipulated by these masters of misdirection. Question the war, and they say you don't support the troops. Ask when the troops will come home, and they say you want to cut and run. We become defensive about our right to dissent.

This White House refuses to be swayed by rational thinking and change of circumstance. Where there is no room for doubt, there is no room for diplomacy. Such radicalism is dangerous. Our country was built on a foundation of democracy and respect for laws, not military industrialism.

"I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and by body snatchers," wrote Vonnegut. "Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy Keystone Kops-style coup d'etat imaginable." You can say that again.

If all we can hope for is a change of power in '08, then shame on us. Have we no conscience?

Rhonda Chriss Lokeman (lokeman@kcstar.com) is a columnist for The Kansas City Star. To find out more about Rhonda Chriss Lokeman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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