The problem isn't the animal that hasn't been properly civilized, it's the human being that's been twisted into a channel for that specifically human problem: evil.

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Someone wrote, in response to my piece "On the Mixtures We Are" (www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andrew_b_051215_on_the_mixtures_we_a.htm ) that indeed we are a mixture-- with reptilian brain and mammalian brain still in there, not always properly governed by our more advanced faculties.

This comment has inspired me to write the following riff.

I think it important that we not see what we're dealing with here as human nature itself.

It isn't about the reptilian brain-- it's about evil.

The problem with Cheney is not that he's a reptile in human form, it is that there's something missing and wrong about his human form. Something sacred got eliminated, something got twisted, something bad happened-- the timeline traced backwards. This is primitive stuff in the sense of its being so spiritually starved and shallow that it cannot register anything of value except its own dominance. But it is not primitive in the sense that this is human nature.

We're difficult and flawed creatures. But given a decent world around us that supported what was best in us to support, we'd be much more beautiful creatures.

This is not about animal versus a more fully evolved human. This is about evil, which operates in a different dimension and universe.

This is about a systematic working of the spirit-- the spirit of the country--

---- as shown most recently in President Bush letting the ugly cat out of the bag in the one moment that he was before us ready to deal with something he does not control.

He gets asked about how many Iraqis have died because of his war. And he answers with a lie --says 30,000 when the studies last year suggested it was 100,000 at that earlier time. And then he feels compelled to make a joke. And people were willing to join with the president in this humor, or to let it pass unremarked.

Except for a perceptive few who have done us the service of calling it to our attention in recent days.

This episode says something very dark about the nature of the spirit operating in the country today, that is not willing to look at the moral implications of the mess in Iraq.

The Bushites unleashed a great deal of destruction on a dubious venture with little regard for the legitimate concerns of anyone else. And then they also made a mess of it. All this death and destruction. If it had succeeded --these guys did not intend to make a mess in Iraq-- it could be imagined that the international system could have done some healing.

But that’s not what’s happened. The WMDs were just a front for an imperialist grab for greater control. And it was bungled. And it is because the spirit of evil is so twisted that these people could not understand the world they were operating in, or move appropriately. I wonder—is stupidity a common by-product of evil?

The Bushites will not be straight about how badly they’ve bungled things. If I had done something as poorly as that, I would have a hard time not apologizing to everyone. I can’t imagine continuing to act as arrogantly as all these Bushites persist in doing, as if they hadn’t screwed up both in terms of competence (eight major blunders) and of morals (lies and arrogance combining).

For someone who cares only about power, having to face one’s failures and defects has no value. So Bush persists in acting like he’s the Hero of Iraq. Giving them all that freedom, that we love so much and that Osama hates us for.

A Hero, a knight in shining armor, this President—he’ll not let go of that and confront failure.

He’s had plenty of experience of failure before, and he doesn’t want to go there. That’s what had him drinking all those years. He didn’t know how to handle failure then either. He doesn’t mind being evil. As long as he can fool enough people to maintain his power, he doesn’t care if people like us can see him as evil. But he wouldn’t want to be seen as a failure, which he’s lately become.

Too bad the American people have not risen up to protest against this moral lie. Joining him in that "joke" is a sign of joining him in the lie about this war, the running away from what should be a guilty conscience.

This was not a defensible war, not the war that these Bushites gave us. This was something done for hidden and evil reasons, and that utilized evil means, like the torture of enemies and the lying to one’s supposed friends.

So now we have Condoleza Rice going around Europe having to deal with the concern of the Europeans that we have become a Gestapo in our willingness to torture to get our way or have become and NKVD with our own hidden Gulag.

This is about evil. That's what I want to stress here. This is about evil, and the power of it has gone very deep.

Sometimes evil puzzles me. I find Condoleza Rice not unappealing in terms of just my sense of her as a woman. I think she really was good at serving George W. Bush and keep him feeling OK. She seems like she's got some major pieces well put together.

But there she is willing to walk around Europe maintaining that we are not the Gestapo and we are not the NKVD, and no, we're not going to deal with this issue in any serious way. You'll never be able to trust anything we say.

We will not unequivocally say that we are going to do everything possible to make sure that every prisoner under our control is treated properly, in accordance with what civilization has agreed upon to place a limit to the "beastiality" of war.

Why is a girl like Condo taking up a position like that? That puzzles me. But there is some dark spirit at work there-- that I can sense. Something in old Condo is willing to check its values at the door in the name of something—maybe the man, maybe the power.

At the highest level of operation, the Bushite thing is about pure power, of which there can never be enough.

With some help, I've come to see the darkness of Cheney more clearly in recent months.

George W. Bush continues to reveal himself to me in his many-fold spiritual and moral defectiveness. So many facets that evil can work through. So much evil that's been achieved through him.

Two great acts of degrading the world.

1)A massive transformation of power and money from the weak and poor up to the mighty and rich here in America.

One theft after another-- not just the tax cuts, but also the backruptcy law, the plundering of the pensions of the American middle class (see TIME Magaine a few weeks ago), and on and on. Bush pushed much of it, the Congress did its foul share.

The prophets of the bible harrangues evil leaders that they do not look out for the widows and the orphans. Yes, it's about evil. And its infiltration into our ruling circles is palpable.

2) And the other world-degrading act-- a grab to control Iraq, an act that has torn up the vital structures of our international system.

These structures are vital because much that is vital for the future of humankind requires the world to act in greater consort, maintaining justice and limiting the terrible things that have always happened in the anarchy that is the intersocietal system. (See THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES)

What a dark spirit it is that has worked through George W. Bush to achieve such terrible things. It has degraded everything it has touched.

The richest are getting still richer while the mass of people are struggling more and more. And they give themselves a tax cut. The world looks at us with dread and disgust.

That whole movement that sought that tax cut was an evil spirit, the spirit of greed. And the coldness of heart. Mercy is not part of its repertoire.

No mercy. Tom DeLay took no prisoners-- and he was the most powerful Republican on Capital Hill. And a gangster.

This is not because Tom Delay is too much of an animal. Look at that guy. He has no connection with his animal body. If he is sexually fulfilled, I don't have the ability to read bodies that I think I have. No animal here. (This is not how a male animal walks!)

It's about evil. It destroys and does so with the face that belongs in a horror show.

Just the spirit of a killer. Take no prisoners. A vengeful spirit. Without needing any real moral claim to seek further vengeance. The spirit of a killer. And he’s the one that the Republican party had made their most powerful figure on Capital Hill.

This is not the party of people like Nelson Rockefeller or Barry Goldwater or Everett Dirksen or Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower would not have wanted his party to give power to a man like Tom Delay.

Something dark has happened to the Republican Party. It is part of a systemic transformation of the face of power in America into an evil face. In corporate America, with its astronomical salaries for CEOs—from 20-40 times the guy on the shop floor to an obscene four hundred and something ratio. In politics, Tom Delay. In religion, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

Billy Graham’s face is a face of goodness. Pat Robertson’s is not. Barry Goldwater was a mensch (I met him briefly). Tom Delay is anything but. And the way corporate America and Congress have collaborated to –as the TIME Magazine story revealed some weeks ago—There is no restraint of self out of reverence for any good.

Not like a healthy animal, a part of primate society. No, like a sick and wounded human being whose twisted spirit has aligned with evil.

This is about evil.

Authors Bio:
Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia's 6th District. His new book -- written to have an impact on the central political battle of our time -- is WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST. His previous books include The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, for which he was awarded the Erik H. Erikson prize by the International Society for Political Psychology.