"PEST" Continues Claiming Victims

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe both:

“The media outlets, especially Rush Limbaugh and his ilk on talk radio, scare our patients to death,” said AHA executive director Robert J. Gordon, facilitator for the meetings. “More than anything else, people with PEST tremble physically.”

...

“We mostly let them vent during the first session,” Gordon said. “By the third session, we’ll be doing some meditation exercises to aid some of their symptoms. We may use visualization and some techniques designed for bipolar disease and other mental disorders. That might help them adjust to reality.”

Um, maybe.

May I suggest breaking out the Aggression Puppets? I had a schizophrenic break when Robert Reich was appointed Secretary of Labor and beating the shit out of that little puppet -- I called him "Fidget" -- really got me past my issues.

According to AHA officials, symptoms of PEST are similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. They include nightmares, sleeplessness, hostility, listlessness, and emotional outbursts including threats to leave the country.

In Alec Baldwin's case, the symptoms also include starring in Cat in the Hat.

“There’s an overall sense of emotional helplessness and abandonment,” said Sheila Cooperman, a licensed AHA psychotherapist from Delray Beach. “In psychology, we call it ‘learned helplessness.’ After you zap a caged dog twice, he stops moving because he knows there is no place to go. That’s what happened with these Kerry voters. They’ve been zapped so many times that they’re on the verge of giving up on politics.”

And we can't have that now, can we?

Look, I've given up on the New York Giants, so I guess I sort of know the feeling. But the fact is, guys, that there will be an election in 2008.

Except if Bush cancels it and installs a ruling military junta and declares himself El Jefe Maximo para Vida, as Paul Krugman always suggests. But honestly, what are the odds of that?

No greater than, say, one in three, I'm thinking. So look on the bright side: There is better than 66% chance that we will not be living in perpetual fascist warstate within two or three years.

It's a glass-is-half-full kind of deal.