Operating Without Any Decent Restraint

Vice President's Staff Awaits Cheney's Return to His Caspar, Wyoming Compound

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(Jivester News, Lmtd.) Following on the heels of his shooting a man while hunting, aides to Vice President Dick Cheney have announced to members of the Press Corps "You ain't seen nothin' yet, folks." Decklyn Hobasher, who is in charge of reloading Cheney's stints (the day shift), told the assembled journalists, "Mr. Cheney...he's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct." I decided to go to the home of our Vice-President, up-river if you will, and find his heart of darkness.

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CASPAR, WYOMING, FEBRUARY 14, 2006

The Compound Perimeter at Cheney's ranch style home has, of late, taken on a kind of ghoulish charm, as the trellis at the entry is festooned with the bones of his proclaimed enemies, and skulls dot the charming foot path up to the main house. Torches illuminate the lower walls, and wild boars feed on the carcasses of his vanquished opponents. In a nod to Valentine's Day, a man's face has been dipped in chocolate and shoved into a heart-shaped box on the front porch, his nearby torso bearing a t-shirt that states "EVERYBODY DIES." Cheney's not your momma's VP, no sir. I went to the compound to gain an audience with this extremely private, thoughtful man, but was careful to not upset him. I brought him a bottle of Glenfiddich and a ten pound sack of crushed kittens, to let him know I was not a threat. I rang the doorbell: a gun fired in the foyer. Lynne Cheney answered the front door, rolled her eyes, and spoke: "Today may not be good, dear. He's having one of his spells."

"Goddamnit, woman!" the Vice President bellowed from inside, shaving cream visible on the base of his neck as he wielded a large razor in his right hand. He had just shaved his head. On the stereo I heard playing the fourth movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Sheherazade" at a decibel so loud one of my legs broke in two. Limping to the bench, I sat as Cheney raced outside, screaming "You hear that? You hear that? You hear that violin? That's music! What did Hannibal Lector listen to? The Goldberg Variations? Can you believe that? The Goldberg Variations! What a pansy! What a goddamn fucking pansy!"

Cheney was still wearing the same blood-stained orange vest he sported at the Armstrong Ranch outside of Corpus Christi, Texas. I glanced at his bloodied vest for the smallest fraction of time, but Cheney saw me do it. I'll tell you one thing, Cheney doesn't miss much. "Like the vest, do you, jivester? Got a little blood on it, I'm afraid. Yeah, a little blood..." he continued, and then trailed off. He lifted his head for just a second before he wheeled and lumbered back in the house: "Some day this war's gonna end" he yelled back over his shoulder. "Yee-haw!"

I pulled my body around to the side of the house, where I could see Dick and Lynne cleaning up in the kitchen. I quieted my breathing long enough to hear him speak: "We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig. Cow after cow. Village after village. Army after army." Lynne just smiled while he talked. I think the secret to the Republican Party's success is its women's ability to serve alongside evil without ever cracking their facades. They are truly blessed, those Republicans.

I fashioned a splint out of a bloodied bayonet, and for what seemed like an eternity I hobbled back to the porch, carefully skirting the dozens of corpses that dotted his otherwise unremarkable front yard. I found Dick hunched over on the porch swing, running his hands over his sweaty (and now bald) pate. He spoke slowly, as if each word were a burden: "You have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies." I nodded in the affirmative, but he did not look up.

"You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us," he said. He finally looked up, straight at me, and added, "Are you an assassin?"

I answered, the way I knew I must if I was to survive: "I'm a soldier."

Cheney knew the script well: "You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill." And then he laughed. It was a good, strong belly laugh, a "Five Deferment Guffaw." And then he stared straight ahead again as he held a hot curling iron up to his mouth, causing the flesh of his lips to smoke. He screamed in agony, turned to me and said, just before passing out: "I'd get out of here if I were you." He lurched forward and began to twitch violently, a kind of massive seizure. I was going to tell Lynne about Dick's antics but then remembered his advice. She'd find him soon enough.

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On the drive home I had an epiphany as I thought: These people, these war mongers, they weren't mad at the Francis Ford Coppola's of the world, at least not for the reasons one might expect. They were not upset at liberals for depicting the horrors of violence and the madness of war. They were upset that everybody wasn't dead yet.


Dick Cheney After Helping Lynne With the Dishes

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Special thanks to John Milius and F. F. Coppola for the Kurtz quotes from the film Apocalypse Now.

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