America has entered a twilight zone of untruth and siege mentality

The rhetoric flies back and forth, from left to right, all focused on "us" "our security" "how to deal with our enemies."

The truth -- our enemies are manufactured -- can never enter the discussion. So each point and counterpoint only reinforces the underlying lie.

Now there's the UAE port deal. To address it, conservatives must sound like liberals and liberals must sound like conservatives.

So the lefties are in a lather, sounding like the traitors on the other side are putting them in mortal danger: "We're at war! How dare anyone put us at risk of attack from our enemies!"

And the righties must take the defensive, but still reassure us that the enemies will be conquered: "Don't make racist judgements. We can't win the war if we don't treat countries fairly!"

But when you're caught in the same false premise, it doesn't really matter. You've already lost.

UPDATE:

From J. Alva comes a link to the sane and sensible thoughts of a fellow blogger with little patience for the hysteria of both left and right:

There is no al-Qaeda organization, and furthermore, there never was. At best there are guys who know a guy, who know a guy, who met bin-Laden years ago. That’s it. People who take up international terrorism slap the label “al-Qaeda” on it so it seems like it’s bigger and badder—and thus better supported—than it really is.

The reason international terrorism exists is because terrorism is—ironically enough from Bush—the “weapon of the weak.” In case people haven’t noticed, there are about 5 billion people who qualify as “weak,” which means that the tiny minority of the world who wish to violently attack the similarly fictional entity known as “America” must by neccessity take up the “weapons of the weak.”

I love it. Not only is the big bad terrorist threat fake, so is the entity known as "America." Now we are really getting somewhere. Kudos.

Another snippet:

Which essentially means we’re killed tens of thousands of people, spent hundreds of billions of dollars, invaded two countries, and generally pissed of the entire planet trying to catch an ordinary manipulative shit who happens to have money, a fanatical take on religion, and a stack of bodybags on his eternal tab.

Hey, why not? There are so many ways one can use their manufactured "enemies." Hysteria and fear are such, excuse the pun, killer tools for manipulation.

UPDATE II:

More on the illusion-reinforcing, lost leftists:

This is why the trolls have to be exorcised so relentlessly. The Kosniks fight ferociously among themselves, but on a deeper level, they are collaborators in maintaining a necessary illusion. My Japanese soldier analogy wasn't quite right. The Japanese soldier is alone, but he is still free, and could put up some kind of fight if anybody ever noticed him. The Kosniks, by contrast, have lots of company, but they've already been rounded up and put in Stalag 13 – or rather, they've put themselves there. They tell each other they're still fighting the war, but they're just going through the motions, drilling ragged, weaponless troops in the prison yard, while their captors look on, laughing, from the guard towers.

-- Michael J. Smith