You may have enemies whom you hate, but not enemies whom you despise. You must be proud of your enemy: then the success of your enemy shall be your success too.
--Friedrich Nietzsche
I don't think Nietzsche was offering an instruction. It's more like an observation. People tend to build up what they oppose; maybe to render failure excusable or to make our success over our opponents something to be proud of.Sometimes, those opponents are our own fears, projected onto something else. You see it all the time on nature programs -- dangerous creatures are given genius they don't actually have. "The shark," a narrator tells us, "Is a wily hunter. He bides his time until he sees the best time to strike."
But the shark is just a fish. On the intelligence scale, it's somewhere above moss. It's not a wily hunter, it's an extremely efficient machine that strikes anything shiny. Cut open a shark and you'll find license plates, deck chairs, and old beer cans in his gut. 'Smart' isn't something a shark's got.
I offer this as a way of explaining Dick Cheney. We tend to think of him as some sort of criminal mastermind. 'Darth Cheney.' He's like a Bond villain -- the man for whom the presidency is merely puppet theater. But the real Dick Cheney is the guy who shot Harry Whittington in the face, thought outing Valerie Plame was a great idea, and was convinced that everyone would buy the argument that the vice presidency was a fourth branch of government.
In short, he's not very smart. Cut open Dick Cheney and you'll find license plates, deck chairs, and old beer cans in his gut. 'Smart' isn't something Dick's got...
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