Dick Cheney Departs The World He Made:

At its heart, American conservatism is a fantasy. It's a vision of a world too evil to be saved or cared about, and fearsome enough to justify any and every impulse toward cruelty and violence that a person might have. A world resolutely unworthy of knowing, except as a danger. A world in which you will always need a gun, and to shoot somebody with it, instead of just lusting for both.

Because the world isn't actually like that—because, in general, people are just people, and mostly want to live peaceably and get along with each other—most American conservatives must mainline Fox News (or Newsmax, or whatever) directly to their brains at all hours in order to remain within the fantasy that both sustains and degrades them.

The nature of Cheney's con—aided by its contrast against Donald Rumsfeld's burlesque vamping, John Ashcroft's spiral-eyed eschatological lunacy, and the president's plain brainlessness—was a thin performance of steely, flinty-eyed competence laid over arrogance, ignorance, and ineptitude.

His vileness and cynicism were corrosive, and have by now more or less fully eaten through every surface and institution exposed to them.