“Irony, anyone?” Antoinette interjected.

“See,” Noam said, “early in 2010, the Supreme Court decided the First Amendment right to make political contributions extended to corporations, so the neo-cons had hundreds of millions at their disposal to smear Obama and the Democrats, virtually at will. Campaign reform died on November 2. Times remained tough enough that the Democrats lost over 60 seats at the next mid-term election, and another two-year campaign was on.”

Antoinette broke into a bitter smile. “Palin had the poor taste to take the money and not run, though, so—after trotting out and publicly executing a series of primary pretenders to mollify the “Teabaggers”—the Brahmin anointed Mitt Romney in private and launched their Labor Day sales campaigns. They didn’t repeat their mistakes.”

Simon chortled. “And—from the ridiculous to the sublime. Guess who profited—literally—from all those toxic TV ads?”

David scratched. “Uh…the media?”

Sean clapped David on the back. “Correct—the Fourth Estate, Guardians of our Precious Freedoms!”

“Oh, there were glimmers of hope before the endgame,” Antoinette said. “Obama opened multilateral diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East early—revived the Arab-Israeli ‘roadmap,’ for real. Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton pieced together a political solution in Iraq, with back-channel help from Syria and Iran’s Shi’ite clerics. They were making progress toward pacifying the Afghan frontier, to divide the Taliban and force Pakistan to disgorge al-Qaeda’s remnants, after taking out bin Laden. Romney and Michelle Bachmann, a Palin stand-in for hard-core female voters, won another close, contested election, and things went downhill quickly, once the old orthodoxy was back in place.”

“You saw what happened,” said Noam. “The Romney administration reversed course, snuggled up to the Sunni oligarchs again, and resumed a hard line with Iran. In early 2014, we bombed selected targets there; they retaliated by launching several Fajr-3 MIRV missiles at Israel. One of the warheads hit their ‘secret’ nuclear weapons reactor at Dimona. Israel launched against targets all over the region. Millions perished and most of the oil fields were contaminated.”