The most pathetic letter to the editor I've ever seen

It was Chris Matthews who coined the meme of the Democrats being the Mommy party and Republicans the Daddy party. But the peculiar dichotomy of Republican supporters being simultaneously "real men" and frightened children in need of an all-powerful protector has never been underscored more than in the years since the 9/11 attacks. Until his colossal fuckup in Iraq, the media were perfectly happy to foster the notion that George W. Bush is a tough guy, the perfect Daddy president for a dangerous time. Now that not even Iraq can be spun as a success anymore and the right-wing punditocracy is falling all over its collective self rewriting history and claiming that he never really WAS one of them, you would think that Republicans might have learned something about the Daddy persona, except for their drooling over Fred Thompson.

Still, there are some die-hard Bush supporters who aren't afraid to show their Inner Frightened Child to the world. One of them had a letter published in the Bergen Record today:

Congratulations to President Bush and his team on foiling the plot at JFK International Airport. I guess the liberal Democrats are running for cover or will try to put a spin on this.

Bush's efforts have saved thousands of Americans lives. So the government should keep on checking those phone calls, e-mails and whatever other methods are being used, and don't listen to all those who cry that suspects have rights. It is nice that we can go to sleep at night knowing that Bush has got our backs covered.

There are few things more pathetic than an adult human being tucked into his little beddy-bye at night with his teddybear, safe in the knowledge that Big Daddy Bush is keeping him safe.

Being frightened may be a normal state for an infant who is completely dependent on others for his/her care. An infant left alone is going to be constantly frightened because an infant is completely dependent on others for safety. As a child grows, and the parent provides a reassuring presence, the child becomes secure that he will be fed, clothed, loved, and kept safe. Once these primal needs are taken care of, the higher brain functions kick in and the rational mind takes over. The primal fear may still lurk under the surface, but most adults can, or should be able to process information and evaluate levels of danger.

Where the Bush Administration has been so successful in the past five years has been in its ability, aided and abetted by a compliant media and an even more compliant Congress, to revert the thinking process of an entire nation of adult to that infant level, to where we forget that we HAVE this ability to think rationally and allow that primary thought process to take over.

As the immediate aftermath of the trauma has lessened, most Americans have remembered that they are adults and that the dangers out there in the world, while present, need not be an obsession. Those who cling to their support of an Administration that has exacerbated the dangers in the world are like infants who simply can't imagine a world in which Daddy is unable to make it all better. Usually this primal fear is couched in tough-guy rhetoric like "You have no civil liberties when you're dead". It's unusual, though, for anyone, even a private citizen writing a letter to the editor, to be willing to show this reversion to infancy so baldly and unashamedly -- particularly when the facts of the JFK plot completely fly in the face of this person's chosen reality.