Graphic By Driftglass [click image for larger]

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

Andrew Sullivan pointed out that few at the Republican conference - and certainly not George Bush or Fred Thompson - seems to have been able to bring themselves to say outright that John McCain was tortured. Lots of descriptions of what McCain went through but no actual T-word, because Republican policy right now is that none of it is "torture".

And that sad fact made me think of this.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.