Killing

The real story, as I and many have suggested, is not that Dick Cheney shot someone in a hunting accident but that he shot someone in a hunting accident and did what comes naturally to a those with pretensions of omnipotence: cover-up, blame shift, diminishing the apparent significance of the event, cowardly hiding. That there is absolutely no reason for any sentient on the planet to believe a single word of any of the explanations offered by Cheney or anyone in his administration means that nothing has changed: there was no reason to believe anything they say about anything before the accident, none after, making the incident emblematic more than revelatory.

I do want to get in one more entry on the event itself.

Is there anything wussier than the most powerful man on the planet, along with other incredibly powerful men and women, drunk on their omnipotence, hatching plans to cement their omnipotence, dressing up like Elmer Fudd, and celebrating it all by kablooming with shotguns at point blank range animals and birds trotted up before them like metal bears on a revolving track at a carnival? They couldn't shoot skeets? Critters have to die? That won't even be eaten? Skeets, metal targets? How does one prove one's power to decide life and death with clay frisbees and tin bears?

I don't understand the lure of dressing in camo, dousing yourself in whatever deer hunters douse themselves in, hiking deep into the woods, perching stock still in a tree stand for hours, shooting a deer, dressing it, carrying it out, eating it, but I do understand there is a significant difference between that and massacring trapped animals for giggles. The first is hunting, the second is killing.

And it's the killing that gives Cheney - and his colleagues, and everyone else who does this - his thrill. Killing for killing's sake. Such a manly man. Such power he wields. Such a coward. Such a despicable effing wussy.