Listen to Me!

Noted medicinal marijuana convert Sanjay Gupta gets at the heart of wingnuttery in an interview with Dick Cheney, whose Manichean Paranoia keeps him from seeing the degrees of difference between doing your job, and doing it well.

Sanjay Gupta: Did you worry about your physical health impacting your judgment and your cognition?
Dick Cheney: No.
Sanjay Gupta: Not at all?
Dick Cheney: No.
Sanjay Gupta: Were you the best you could be?
Dick Cheney: You know, I was as good as I could be, you know, given the fact I was 60-some years old at that point and a heart patient.

So, yeah, I had limitations, but I'm still 10 times the neocon warmonger all the other possible VP nominees were.

Sanjay Gupta: This idea that you have this respected heart surgeon from Texas [Denton Cooley] who didn't see you, didn't examine you, and then writes something saying that you have normal cardiac function. That just wasn't true, Mr. Vice President.
Dick Cheney: Go ask Denton Cooley about that.

So, "Go fuck yourself. You can call me a liar, Denton Cooley might call me a liar. But you won't get me to call myself one."

Sanjay Gupta: But sir, you saw it.
Dick Cheney: Listen to me, I think the bottom line is: was I up to the task of being vice president? And there’s no question. I think based upon the fact that I did it for eight years that they were right.

"Listen to me..."

As Professor Harry Frankfurt tells us in On Bullshit, a bullshitter changes the rules governing their end of the conversation so claims about truth or falsity are irrelevant. It doesn't matter that Dick lied about the severity of his heart condition before becoming Vice President of the United States, what matters is his circular logic that he did the job, so he must've been fine.

The most important part here, for the purposes of Keep Talking, Wingnuts, is the "Listen to me." This is Dick threatening you. He is saying, listen to me, or I'll shock and awe you into the stone age. This is the right wing infatuation with violence personified and deferred to.

This is a now powerless Dick Cheney saying, because he can't send Navy Seals or a drone to kill you, "I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here while you try to say that the disaster that was the Bush administration is my fault because I ignored the connection between heart disease and memory loss, depression, impaired cognition, and impaired decision making abilities."

That list of the side effects of Cheney's heart condition perfectly describe the 8 disastrous years he uses as evidence that he was fit to do the job. Couldn't have said it better myself. Keep talking, Dick.