Also, the smiley face as the oldest example of a mask seems like a very rich topic for another post.

The question then becomes:

"Can we change the state of the maze?"

Can we calm the fitful dark storm that is caged in this maze of humanity?

String theory.

We are all, each of us, made of strings.

At any given moment, we have the potential to either exist as individual isolated strings all tied up in balls of knots, or exist collectively as a perfectly tuned string instrument.

Long live music and art and poetry and nature.

Historically, the U.S. has paid and armed different factions to fight as proxies in the Middle East. And this still goes on.

What's not talked about much is who is paying the U.S. to fight as its proxy?

Are we even in control of our own destiny in the region?

Or have we squandered our treasure so much that we are now someone else's pawn in the big game?

There wasn't.

He told you that he had to invade Iraq in order to save the world from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

There were no weapons of mass destruction.

He told you in June of 2005 that the insurgency in Iraq was in its last throes.

Hardly.

Now he tells you that he committed war crimes to "save lives".

And he does so with that signature smugness and blind manipulative arrogance. But this time, it's accompanied by a nervousness, a fear that wasn't present before.

We see a crack in the cold calculating facade of this faux patriot.

He realizes that he cannot sell his lies wholesale anymore. Sure, he can sell the beltway media on his pathetic feebly constructed "I did it for my country" narrative. But the beltway media will buy anything. It is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of gullibility.

The problem for Cheney, really, is the rest of the world.

To the rest of the world, he's lost all credibility.

And to a salesman like Cheney, credibility is more important than honor.

He belongs in leg irons and everyone in the world knows this.

True, a lot of times it's not even there now. But getting the millions of people who think they're covered to dig deeper into what exactly they're paying for might do a better job at taking away their illusions.