Cruel and Unusual

Mark Crispin Miller's new book
Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order is a great critique of the Bush administration's dangerous turn to the right and the mass media's failure to function as an independent fourth estate. Miller's well documented accumulation of evidence piles up and gathers force to support his thesis that Bush represents a faction of the right wing dedicated to tearing down the traditional libertarian civil society as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson and replacing it with a theocratic government based on Biblical law. Sound farfetched and paranoid? Perhaps. Now read the book and decide for yourself. A few highlights are worth mentioning: a review of how the media "took down" UN inspector Scott Ritter, the frank critic of Bush policies towards Iraq; an astonishing explanation of why the rabid right demonized Bill Clinton, and for my money, the best analysis of how the right wing propaganda empire projects evil on its enemies. Psychological projection really helps to explain the phenomenon of bullies like Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and angry white dittoheads. Miller builds his case steadily, leading up to his final argument about the the theocratic aims of the religious right, who view the world through Manichean, apocolyptic lenses. Chilling, disturbing and outrageous.