And we're done. We've gone through eleven months; there's only one to go. December. December seems so far away now. There was a thing that happened, and another, and possibly a third? No matter; it was the end of the year, and for merely bringing the year to a close it deserves our thanks. You can expect a candy bouquet in the mail, December—please let us know your mailing address?
On the topic of signs of the apocalypse, there was one event that, had it happened any other month, would be a shoe-in for a sign of the end times. I speak of course of the December news that Jeb Bush, the "smart one," was himself making preparations for a possible run for the presidency.
It hasn't been that long, you know. We aren't talking about the great-grandson of a catastrophically blundering, buffoonish president that devastated the nation's economy, presided over a horrific terrorist attack, lied outright in order to lodge America into a second war because his advisers weren't satisfied with the first, and so on, and so on. We're talking about installing that guy's brother, because no matter how much America pretends at its democratic traditions there is a very damn large chunk of our culture that demands, if not a return to a monarchy or other heredity rule, something that tastes as much like it as we can muster. Having a third Bush become president, and having three of the last five presidents be people who all slept in the same house, would not be a rhetorical sign of the apocalypse. It would be the actual freaking apocalypse.
Any other month, that would be a shoe-in. Not this month. Because this month, the Senate finally released its long-delayed report on the official American program to torture prisoners. This was met not with universal horror that our supposedly uniquely civilized nation would do such a thing, but with widespread declarations that torture is, indeed, an American value. No less than a member of the Supreme Court weighed in to give it his blessing.
But the most telling and concrete declaration as to the merits of state-sponsored torture was the man who, more than any other, sponsored the program. He worked for the last President Bush to implement it, and he has been a staunch "advocate" of state-sponsored torture throughout, never wavering, and that brings us to our surest symbol of an America teetering on the edge of the abyss, and of the entire human race being nothing more than particularly cruel primates with a chip on their shoulders, destined in the end to not amount to a cosmic hill of beans. Presenting former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is not in jail. Who still gets to be on television. Who is not merely our American voice for state-sponsored torture of prisoners who we are sure are guilty, but our American voice for the state-sponsored torture of even innocent captives. There is your sign of the apocalypse. Other signs of the apocalypse crib from our national insistence that we be governed by the loud and the dumb; Dick Cheney is the personified celebration of our own malevolence.
CHUCK TODD: Let me go to Gul Rahman. He was chained to the wall of his cell, doused with water, froze to death in C.I.A. custody. And it turned out it was a case of mistaken identity.
DICK CHENEY: --right. But the problem I had is with the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield. [...] I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent.
CHUCK TODD: 25% of the detainees though, 25% turned out to be innocent. They were released.
DICK CHENEY: Where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are-- [...]
CHUCK TODD: Is that too high? You're okay with that margin for error?
DICK CHENEY: I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.
And with that, we end. Not with a whimper, but with a bang.