Is it really any wonder this man lives in something of a fantasy world? Imagine if you were Bush, and everywhere you went people loved you, and you stood under bright lights in front of giant graphics and made simple declarative statements and the crowds roared with approval.

Afterwards your aides gathered round to brief you on the world, telling you that freedom is on the march in Iraq thanks to your bold leadership and that the sluggish US economy is turning the corner thanks to your fearless pursuit of tax relief for the upper-upper classes.

Look at the photo. It's like a goddamn videogame. George W. Bush is our first adventurer into true "virtual reality."

But come on. If it were you, you'd probably believe it. You'd believe in yourself and you'd believe in the people around you, and the fact that all this believing had little or nothing to do with reality would be politely avoided for as long as possible.

The president knows how to do this. Bush was a drunk for a long time. He knows how to rationalize, and he knows how to sell himself on something so that he can convince others. All addicts learn this skill, and I can't help but think this is the pattern he's fallen into now, and the thought chills me to the bone.

The other day I was IMing with Zephyr and she told me I was "in the bubble," which at first pissed me off, but then sort of sunk in. It's true. Pursuant to the few posts down there re: billmon and all that jazz, I've sunk into the bubble.

Part of that has to do with my professionalization by osmosis, but a large part of it has to do with the comfort of retrating into the conventional bounds of political discussion. I can look back at the run up to the war, for instance, and see why people scoffed at the very possibility that it would happen. It's very distressing to confront certain realities, and much easier to play ping pong with the spinsters than to really deal with what is going on.

When I step back and look at it objectively, Bush is terrifyingly close to a facist. His foreign policy is imperial, and his domestic policy is rapacious, and he seeks to maintain power by presenting himself as the only person who can protect and safeguard the "homeland." This isn't funny, and I'm legitimately frightened of four more years. Not only will that mean the perpetuation of his damaging policies, but it will have meant that his political tactics worked.

A victory for Bush/Rove will send a message to the political class that lies, smears, photo-ops and grandstanding can trump a record of failure and calamity. It will vindicate a callously dishonest and manipulative candidate, and it will raise the likelyhood that Democrats (who will very quickly fall to bitter infighting over who's "fault" the loss is) will pull from that playbook in the future.

I'm scared because I want to believe in the people of this country, and I want to believe in democracy and the underlying legitimacy of our system, crudded up through it may be. If Bush wins, this will all be called into question, and the future will look a lot darker through my eyes.