Does this guy look like he’s your grandfather telling you to go to the woodshed and pick out a strong, green hickory switch that he will use to beat your ass? Or is this the face of the headmaster at an orphanage who “punishes” unruly children in the privacy of his office with the shades drawn and the door locked?

Either way, Donald Rumsfeld is a paragon of d-baggery in American history. If there were a shelf for fine, barrel-aged, smoke-cured d-bags, he would be on top. More than Robert McNamara, Rumsfeld’s predecessor in short-sighted, know-it-all militarist d-baggery, Rumsfeld brought the ignorance and the arrogance of power to new heights within the framework of all-American, apple pie eating ideology.

Rumsfeld’s main accomplishment is the Rumsfeld Doctrine, a perfect synthesis of d-bag philosophies that assures American presidents who want to wage foreign wars but on the cheap that they can have their cake and eat it too. “I deserve it” + “paying for it is someone else’s problem” = Rumsfeld Doctrine. This is also the basis of the business practice of generating “externalities” — that is, costs of maintaining capital or labor that someone else has to pay, preferably the public.

For being the sufficient and necessary cause of millions of dead men and women at absolutely no cost to himself or his conscience, we enroll Donald Rumsfeld in the Dictionary of National D-bags!

D-bags are fond of accusing others of being Nazis. We live for it. We also like to accuse white people of it. The difference is when we’re not accusing someone of being a Nazi, we’re accusing them of appeasement.

Winston Churchill was a monarchist, suspicious of democratic institutions, who railed against  the abdication of prince Edward. His thorough self-knowledge was an advantage when he saw Hitler’s absolutist ambitions. Churchill correctly identified how big a d-bag Hitler would turn out to be.

Then again, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Some d-bags have suggested that regular white folks like to compare people they don’t like to Hitler. That may be true, but white folks have absolutely nothing on d-bags when it comes to throwing around terms like Hitler, fascist and anti-Semite.

The argument goes something like this: If you’re nice to other people you’re a liar and hypocrite. Deep down people are not nice — not at all! At least I (the d-bag) am honest about being a pompous, overbearing, selfish ass, and this means I am a freedom loving Republican. If you help people you actually take away their freedom by obliging them to yourself. Because we are all d-bags deep down we all resent being helped and put under an obligation.

Now, we d-bags love power. We love conspicuous displays of waste because it shows off our power. We love torturing children to show off our power. We love putting limits on what citizens can do and say to show off our power. We especially love signing statements.

The most straightforward definition of fascism is “authoritarian nationalist political ideologies or mass movements that are concerned with notions of cultural decline or decadence and seek to achieve a millenarian national rebirth by exalting the nation or race, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity.” And the most straightforward exposition of such an ideology can be found in the mouths of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Michele Malkin. But because these d-bag philosophers are Americans who love their country and hate people who don’t love it as much as they do, they aren’t fascists. No, it’s the liberals who want to help the poor, build public transportation, and protect the rights of all men and women who are the real authoritarian heirs to Hitler.

Our latest installment in the Dictionary of National D-bags is John Yoo, perhaps the greatest d-bag of the early 21st century.

Yoo is an Ivy educated d-bag, graduating with a BA from Harvard and a JD from Yale. But because he is “off-white” he is acceptable to white d-bags as a poster boy for Horatio Alger-style luck and pluck. Like his mentor Clarence Thomas, Yoo had all the benefits of American society but none of the guilt. This happy situation has allowed him to be the purest voice of d-bag advocacy in the United States today.

You may know Yoo for his controversial opinions on the power of the U. S. government, including his opinion that the president has the right, if not the obligation, to spy on American citizens during a time of war. (This is extremely relevant today in light of the Senate’s passage of a bill to immunize telecoms who broke the law and protect the Bush administration from people finding out exactly how far they peered into our lives. Bush “relishes” signing it.) Or maybe you know Yoo for his “torture memos” that argued the state has the power to inflict whatever pain short of death it thinks necessary on captives. These things certainly make Yoo a tyrant and a monster — but not a d-bag! Monsters are capable of integrity; d-bags think integrity is for pussies.

D-bags say they deserve to be exempt from rules that everyone else has to follow — like keeping your contracts, honoring your promises, and believing in fair play. That is why when Yoo’s man is president he says things like, “To his critics, Mr. Bush is a ‘King George’ bent on an ‘imperial presidency.’ But the inescapable fact is that war shifts power to the branch most responsible for its waging: the executive.”

But when Yoo’s man is not president he argues the exact opposite in a tone of principled integrity: “President Clinton exercised the powers of the imperial presidency to the utmost in the area in which those powers are already at their height — in our dealings with foreign nations. Unfortunately, the record of the administration has not been a happy one, in light of its costs to the Constitution and the American legal system. On a series of different international relations matters, such as war, international institutions, and treaties, President Clinton has accelerated the disturbing trends in foreign policy that undermine notions of democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law.”

You might say he’s just being a lawyer, but even lawyers can once in a while show integrity. Rather, he is the intellectual prince of d-bags, telling bald-faced lies and willfully perverting truth to justify bad people in their bad behavior. And for that John Yoo is today’s honored entry in the Dictionary of National D-bags!

NOTE TO LIBERTARIAN D-BAGS: People who think it’s OK for one party to break their promises to another party are probably the same people who will take your stuff and throw you in jail if you object.

Rolling green fields, blue skies flecked with soft, white clouds, the smell of freshly cut grass in July — these are a few of a d-bag’s favorite things. But only if you can see them through the bay window of a McMansion being cooled to a barely tolerable 65 degrees. Sometimes it’s OK to look at them as they whiz by the windows of your Hummer. D-bags are not into being outside if it involves feet or exercise.

D-bags love nature, but only as it exists in advertisements for Dodge trucks, Archer Daniels Midland corporation, or Lonesome Dove reruns. Otherwise d-bags like their nature paved. But not too much! We still like the expanses of green between ribbons of gray! Nothing says d-bag like well watered and manicured lawns as far as the eye can see, preferably in a desert somewhere in Southern California, Nevada, New Mexico, or Arizona. Those green fields are our d-bag birthright as Americans. They are the promise given us by the Founders of life, liberty, and a little plot of earth (no less than six acres) with all the amenities of a city including indoor plumbing, air conditioning, satellite TV, a four car garage, and an in-ground pool in the back yard. This is why the Greatest Generation died fighting Nazis and Japs — so that each and every American can live like an absolute feudal lord on his little exurban fief.

Many non-d-bags are subjected day-in and day-out to the pushy, rude, self-absorbed rants of d-bags. Self-righteous anger is a d-bag’s stock-in-trade. Most of the time we can get away with this because most pussies are too scared to stand up and defend themselves. But sometimes the quiet guy in the corner gets his panties in a bunch, his dander up, and his his choler high. He starts shouting something about how he can’t take it anymore, and if you really want to end this you’ll step outside. Maybe you were birddoggin’ him, or maybe he just can’t stand you saying — all evidence to the contrary — that voting for “W” in 2000 and 2004 was a good idea. Maybe you said Obama was a Muslim whose best friend is Osama a little too loud. It doesn’t matter because this pussy has just given you a golden opportunity. Tell him to just chill out!

Part of the d-bag creed is that others are not allowed to do what you are. Pussies are not allowed the privilege of anger; wimps are not allowed to invite their friends to gang up on you in the parking lot; women are not allowed to screw other men; the poor will have no perks; and laughter belongs to the strong. Showing anger when you have a good reason to be angry is losing control and a sign of weakness. Being angry at everything, and self-righteously taking your revenge on innocents is d-baggery.

A lot of times d-bags like to tell you they are hard-nosed realists and unsentimental skeptics who coolly assess the facts and don’t let their emotions cloud their judgement. If you believe this, d-bags will surely laugh at you, and let’s face it, you deserve it. The soul of d-baggery is making someone else play by rules that the d-bag doesn’t have to follow. For the sake of enlightening and instructing non-d-bags in the ways of d-baggery, Chunque will explain heroes to the world. The difference between a d-bag hero and a traditional hero is all in the dress code. That is, a normal person doesn’t require his sentimental crap to come dressed in a uniform.

For a d-bag a hero is anyone who has the power to wreck someone else’s life but decides not to out of sheer benevolence. Alcoholic fathers, mustachioed cops on the take, anyone who saves a kitty from a tree, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are all heroes by this definition. Let’s make this a no-brainer: if you are man enough to use sophisticated legal arguments to defraud the powerless and waste precious resources — just because you can — but are sensitive enough to get choked up over a Mel Gibson movie like The Patriot, you are probably a d-bag hero.

The dark lord of d-baggery says that conservation is a “personal virtue“. Let’s unpack that for the non-d-bags who might read this blog. By “personal” he means domestic, feminine, and weak. An “impersonal” virtue, on the other hand, is the kind that heroes have: masculine, skeptical, rational, wasteful, outwardly directed, careless of others’ needs or safety, committed to a larger cause — the big picture — which the d-bag has impersonally decided was in everyone else’s best interests.

Sadly, it is difficult for every aspiring d-bag to be a hero by practicing impersonal virtues. (This is particularly true for d-bag intellectuals like Christopher Hitchens, Penn Jillette, and Trey Parker.) That is why there are more opportunities to be a d-bag hero at your local Hummer dealership than there are on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The core d-bag philosophy is “I deserve somethin’ for nothin’”. D-bags all over the world can thank the internet for allowing folks with no talent and no intelligence the opportunity to spread their crassness like VD.

Katharine Mieszkowski has written a piece in Salon about our favorite d-bag that demonstrates how well the internet works to spread mendacity across the globe. Her interview, which comes just short of oral sex, is completely void of critical thinking. Maybe that’s why they call them “puff” pieces?

Usually a d-bag has to go to Fox News or Howard Stern to satisfy his hunger for tales of fake tits, pedophiles, and muslim suicide bombers. Thanks to the internet d-bags are now able to create their own content, and with the help of a few friends you can go from being a mid-level drone to a publishing success overnight!

Ignore the man behind the curtain!

Developing verbal skills is too much work for a d-bag. If it’s not a no-brainer, I don’t want any part of it! What’s more, critical reasoning and/or skepticism is for pussies. If you can’t chant it, forget it! Most of the time a d-bag can solve his problems the old-fashioned way — with his fists! But on occasion some weak-ass, know-it-all egg-head will use superior logic and a stronger grasp of reality (not to mention citable sources and good grammar) to disarm a d-bag — usually in front of people who might not have the d-bag’s back should a fight break out. (For example, when the d-bag is in a room full of TV cameras. Taking advantage of a d-bag in this way is a sure sign your enemy is a pussy.) For just such an emergency, the Ivy educated d-bags invented “talking points”.

Talking points are easy to remember. They often come in “bullet” form. This is why so many d-bags use Powerpoint to write instead of English. And more importantly, you can get them freshly updated every day from Fox News. No more worries! When someone starts asking embarrassing questions you can’t answer, shout them down with your talking points! Problem solved. It’s a no-brainer!

Every d-bag has a god-given right to freedom, and by freedom I mean driving a giant SUV. In order that we may form a more perfect union of consumer and consumption, our leaders — federal, state and local — took it upon themselves to make sure that no American would ever have to share his or her personal space on public transportation.

But freedom isn’t free. The price for freedom these days is just over $4 a gallon, and the end isn’t in sight. However, d-bags of all walks can feel triumph in the announcement that the largest American oil companies might receive no-bid contracts to drill for oil in Iraq. This accomplishes three key d-bag objectives:

• It proves that you can tell a bald-faced lie for years and get away with it
• It shows that having a solid pair of stones and never admitting defeat will, in fact, enrich you in the short term
• It shows that power is the ability to buy — and keep — politicians, news outlets, talking heads, government offices and private militias. (I am referring, of course, to Blackwater Mercenaries Inc.)

Join the revolution! Corruption is good for America, because I deserve it!