I make no secret of how I feel toward Karen Hughes: I thoroughly loathe her. She is the female version of Karl Rove, and while Karl is the master of the smear, Karen is the master of the deceptive talking point. Universally despised by every reporter for her maddening insistence on “staying on-message” even when everyone knows she is lying, Karen’s game was best summarized by right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson after he held a BS interview with her.

I’ve obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness.

Which brings us to today’s story. Karen is upset that we aren’t all going crazy enough over the nightmare of terrorism, even though so many of us now look with dread and suspicion on all things Moslem, even though we are throwing people off of planes because of T-shirts with arabic writing, even though we are indulging in non-stop grieving (understandably so) over 911, which the president raises at every possible moment. No, none of this is enough. We must do more, each and every one of us, making terrorism our No. 1 obsession. Where, oh where, Karen mournfully asks, is all the outrage??

Terrorism threatens all of us. It targets the very foundations of a free society. Yet where are the mothers organizing against terrorism as American mothers did against drunken driving? Where are the fathers promising to teach their sons to choose to live rather than choose to die? Where are the religious clerics and congregations of all faiths arguing that no just and loving God would call on young men and women to kill themselves and others in the name of religion?

….So why aren’t more of us doing more to stop the terror?

First, I believe most of us hope that terrorism is an aberration. Unfortunately, I do not believe it is true. Part of my job is to look at the propaganda being spread on Internet sites and TV sets around the world. It is chilling. Bombings are depicted as acts of glory. Children are being taught the language of hate. Thousands of people have been trained in terror training camps, convinced the only way to defend their faith is to kill all others who have a different point of view.

She honestly believe we need Mothers Against Drunk Driving-type programs to curb terrorism? She really thinks each of us should be actively engaged in fighting terrorism? I hate to tell her this, but there is more to our human existence than terrorism. Yes, it’s evil and bad and we should be vigilant and cautious and protect the airports and maintain security standards, etc., etc. But if we allow 18 men with box cutters to turn us into a nation of crazed paranoiacs existing only to think about terrorism, then Osama will have won by a landslide. (And he already has.)

All of that propaganda she’s seeing, all the gleeful exuberance over acts of terrorism, all the threats – they’ve been with us for a very long time, and we won’t stop Jihadists in Pakistan from committing their atrocities with cookie sales in America to boost terrorism awareness. Outrage isn’t the solution. (Maybe a more practical solution would be taking seriously reports written from terrorism authorities titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack within the United States.”) There’s a time for outrage and we deserve to feel outrage for years to come over 911. But to demand that we keep it top of mind at all times and live a life dedicated to “standing up to terrorism” (whatever that means) is, again, a sign that we lost to Al Qaeda. Osama has turned us inside out. He has made us irrational. We live in the shadow of his fear, and that fear is Osama’s victory.

Meanwhile, the real truth is Hughes just wants to make us all hysterical before the November elections. After that, she couldn’t give a flying fuck. Like her counterpart Karl, she lives for one thing and one thing only, protecting Boy George, and everything she advocates is always and inevitably tied to Bush’s political standing. Never believe a single syllable she says. There’s a reason she’s the most detested woman in Washington. (Sorry if I sound a tad harsh, but I’ve had issues with this lady for years and years.)