Confessions of a former Putzhead.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out John Cole's soul-searching post about the pathetic state of the Republican Party. Cole still considers himself a Republican who nonetheless admits, "Bush has been a terrible President." I have a feeling they'll be a lot more where that came from.

Anway, couldn't help but notice this insightful comment about Putz, posted by a reader of Cole's.

Alright, I’ll confess. I was a teenage Republican, too. Granted, I’m only 21 now, so things are a little bit different – but I was brainwashed just the same. Brainwashed by fear.

Really, if you’re scared enough, you have no choice but to become a Republican. It’s quite brilliant, what they’ve done, and depressing. I supported the war, because (as just one example) every single day Glenn Reynolds had some terrifying new development, more proof that Saddam had thousands upon thousands of functional, feasible WMDs; which translated to more proof that the UN couldn’t be trusted; which translated to more proof that The Left (oddly enough, I had been the only Gore supporter at my high school only a few years earlier) was objectively pro-Saddam, pro-Terrorist, etc. The worst-case “they’re just blind” didn’t even exist in the face of Karl’s Glenn’s mountain of evidence that I believed because, well, I’d been reading his site for so long that I was essentially a dittohead. I had tuned out the dreaded MSM because of… well, actually, I have no fucking clue. In retrospect, every single proof of “liberal media bias” turned out to be bullshit. As did, needless to say, all those WMD claims.

The difference is that I didn’t forget what I believed from one day to the next. (Okay, 9/11 excepted.) When the pundits, Insta- and non-Insta, began claiming with a straight face that a) nobody ever mentioned WMDs and b) we had found a big pile of WMDs anyhow, well, I wasn’t that fucking stupid. The 1984 alarm bells and whistles started going off, and I knew I’d been had, and never looked back. That’s really all it boils down to.

People do not like to be duped, Putz. There are consequences for shilling for a failed President and a disasterous war.

The chickens are finally coming home to roost.