It's nice to see that Howard Dean recognizes his own humanity. Here's his take on it.

I'm a human being, I make mistakes, but because of that I'll be able to take the White House back for ordinary Americans.

Do you see the connection you are supposed to see? Because Howard Dean is human he will take back the White House for "ordinary" Americans like himself. Only, he is a Northeastern upper-class white boy with serious boomer tantrums. Presumably, Bush— who, you must remember, stole the White House from Gore (because, you see, that is always the sub-text of anything Dean and most Democrats say against Bush) and is now leading the nation without a mandate, has usurped the throne that was destined by God to go to Gore. Note to Dr. Dean. Before 9/11 Bush had no mandate. After 9/11 this is no longer true. I commend Dean on grasping the obvious, that he is only human. I just wish he would grasp the fundamental reality that Bush has a mandate for re-election and its name is national security.

But then, us hicks—I'm an Ohioan born and raised—simply don't count because we are as stupid as Bush. The term national security sends chills up the spine of the Left as they imagine a Twilight Zone episode where reality as we know it is a sham and the real deal is behind the curtain and do you dare lift it up to see what is behind it? The brilliantly conceived and produced television series, The X-Files, is the grandchild of Rod Serling. It was a play on the chic of radical skepticism about the basic and inherent rightness of our way of life, of our values, and of our government, that continues to fuel collective fantasies, only to have one believe in the unbelievable. For those who continue to be conspiratorially minded and luxuriate in their belief, or maybe it is just a feeling, that things are not what they seem, The X-Files was more than a television show. It was aesthetic and fictional confirmation that the sinister has the upper hand and human decency is about as viable a possibility as the belief in an after-life. Surely we are far too intelligent and educated, given the dividends we enjoy from corporate capitalism, globalization, and the military-post-manufacturing industrial complex, to believe in life after death. But what about aliens? Even Charlie Rose asked David Duchovny, who played The X-Files underdog Fox Mulder, if he believed in UFOs. Of course, someone as brilliant and educated in the humanities as Duchovny does not but, like Clinton, he weighed the polls and did not come right out and say no. That would ruin the mystique of The X-Files and harm its marketing power. He simply said that the show was excellently written. Certainly true, but certainly not an answer to Mr. Rose's question.

So myth is more a pandering to people's idiotic beliefs than edification. Myth is supposed to be constructive, not de-constructive. What could be more "post-modern," more "post-historical," and more ironic than the Virgin Birth of Agent Scully—by alien intervention!. "For unto us an alien hybrid is born!" It makes for good fiction but unwisely forgotten to be so.

The conspirazoids like Dean, Kucinich, Sharpton, and Clark, all sunk ships this election year, will have you believe any amount of hooey concerning the White House they can throw at you. The crowd they appeal to is the The X-Files crowd. A gross generalization to be sure but still on mark. Anything can and does happen behind the White House curtain. Bush is surely planning dire schemes against the will of "ordinary" Americans. Anything Bush says is skewed to be evidence of oil-cartel backroom deals with men in suits and thick necks. That is, if you're willing to play ball, you'll believe.

That shows me just how bad the Democrats are. They have nothing to offer. They are so out of touch and morally compromised they can't be a political option when they would otherwise be the only hope to fight the far Right. Yet I share values with the far Right that I find bewildering many on the Left, including Liberals, don't. I too support America's right to defend herself and I know we are doing the right thing in "exporting," as the Left cynically detracts, democracy to the Middle East. I believe we are helping the peoples of Iraq become free and pray that we are successful in that moral task, even though our primary motive for doing so is national defense. To ask pre-emptively, what is wrong with national defense? With self-interest? I know some are sick and tired of the WWII comparisons when speaking of the war on terrorism, but should we be uncomfortably grateful that the Japanese forced the U.S. to look after its own deepest self-interests in entering the war?

For the Left, impure motives are never enough. Enlightened self-interest, doing the right thing because you have to for everyone's collective and individual survival, is suspect. In case any conspirazoid reading this doesn't know what I'm talking about, I'm referring to September 11th and the war on terrorism. Self-interest is taboo. It always means oil-cartel, frozen alien bodies for post-mortems, or try this one out for size (interesting, no?, how a disregard for the humanities leads to a contempt for science). Better not to believe in the well- reasoned possibility of WMD in Iraq than be skeptical about the false belief that the Bush Administration is setting up a fossil fuel satrapy in the heart of the Middle East. Enter Mark Snow's ingenious scoring to the background of the The X-Files

That is why going into the Balkans, eventually, is viewed by many as morally sound under Clinton but the intervention in Iraq under Bush is not. Weakening Milosevic and keeping him from expelling the Kosovar Albanians were not an issue of self-defense for the United States, though it was very much in the interests of the European Union that chose to do nothing on its own. But to go after Saddam is a matter of national security. He was a real threat to the United States, the Middle East, and his own people, with or without possessing WMD at the time. I certainly have my negative criticisms that Bush asserted a positive conclusion that Saddam had them to be the main buttress for justifying the invasion, but Saddam's nexus with terrorists is substantiated enough to make the claim that invasion was justified. Yet it is a waste of time to argue this with those who are part of the conspirazoid Left because even recognizing the justification for deposing Saddam would not be enough. There are still many on the Left who believe with Michael Moore that bombing the Serbs to weaken Milosevic was wrong—even after the fact of his removal and a better world for it!

If going into Iraq weren't a matter of self-interest, as intervention in the Balkans surely wasn't, why the objection to what amounted to liberation of the Iraqi people? Bush used the propaganda of liberation to justify the war not only in terms of authentic, yet secondary, concern for the plight of others, but, in effect, to show up the Left in its own hypocrisy as he did the U.N. when he challenged it to enforce its own resolutions against Saddam Hussein. In both cases, the U.N. and the anti-war Left, Bush called their bluff and they blinked. After years of carping that the U.S. supported a son of a bitch like Saddam Hussein—but never to the extent the French, German, Russians, and Chinese did—you would think they would at least be happy to see him go, even if to upbraid the Neanderthal Republicans by saying, "I told you so!" Instead, the conspirazoid Dean says we are no safer.

There are other values I share with the Right. I am also a staunch supporter of Israel, which means, to put it as delicately as I can, that I do not support the annihilation of the Jewish homeland and, by implication, their eventual annihilation throughout the world. Exaggeration? Guess again. Our enemies wish to kill all Jews. A Jew-free world, as formerly for the Nazis, is another reason-to-be for the Islamists. My support for Israel gives me something in common with Gary Bauer. It simply can't be helped and it surprises me to no end that when it comes to a war for our survival, and for the very values that the Bush opposition should hold dear, a Bauer has more common cause with a Tony Blair, a gay-friendly socialist who loves big government and the European Union, than either one of them has with the anti-war crowd.

Out of touch. Missed the bus. Historically on Chapter One (read, the Vietnam War), the anti-Bush, anti-war crowd is pages behind Bauer and Blair. No, the conspirazoids are not an option. I won't follow Deanelogy and its variants. I don't espouse a way of thinking that assumes the worst about the United States, without evidence, and expressing that conviction by animus toward the president. My current record in criticizing a president I support is evidence I don't burn incense at his altar, either. Deaneology is a cult following of disaffected voters too angry to think rationally. In fact, Dean's constituents are so irrational they don't even understand why someone like myself, and a sizeable majority of Americans west of the Hudson River, are outraged over being viciously attacked on September 11th. Isn't that supposed to be barbaric patriotism or something?

I have serious problems with Bush's catering to the Right. The Republican gay lobby, the Log Cabin Republicans, is currently questioning its support for Bush, though I doubt, as I note above, that gay- baiting will be a recipe for Bush's defeat. Wishful thinking. Yet, I will still vote for him. That also means I will be unstinting in my criticisms of Bush where I call them. After all, I have that right regardless. But all the more so because he's my willfully chosen representative in the White House. It is one of the freedoms I have.