A White House Fluent In Language Of Fanatics
by Arianna Huffington

Maybe Karl Rove has moved his office into the "Matrix." Maybe Laurence Fishburne is auditioning for Ari Fleischer's job. Maybe it's all just a bad dream: "The White House Reloaded."

I've been racking my brain, trying to reconcile the ever-widening chasm between what the White House claims to be true and what is actually true. After all, we know the president and his men are not stupid. And despite the tidal wave of misinformation pouring out of their mouths, I don't believe they are consciously lying.

The best explanation I can come up with for the growing gap between their rhetoric and reality is that we are being governed by a gang of out and out fanatics.

The defining trait of the fanatic -- be it a Marxist, a fascist, or, gulp, a Wolfowitz -- is the utter refusal to allow anything as piddling as evidence to get in the way of an unshakable belief. Bush and his fellow fanatics are the political equivalent of those yogis who can hold their breath and go without air for hours. Such is their mental control, they can go without truth for, well, years. Because, in their minds, they're always right. Oopso facto.

That pretty much sums up the White House m.o. on everything, from the status of al-Qaeda to the condition of post-war Iraq to the magical job-producing virtues of the latest round of tax cuts.

Who else but a fanatic would have made the outrageous claim, as the president did last Friday, just four days after the deadly reemergence of al-Qaeda in Riyadh, that "the United States people are more secure, the world is going to be more peaceful"? More peaceful than what? The West Bank?
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