I   Several charlatans arrived in the President’s office.  

   “Here’s the deal, boys.  I want to start a war to settle an old grudge without it looking like an old grudge I’m settling.  I need to invent a set of reasons.  I’m told you specialize in such stuff.”
    “Yep, we can clothe your nakedest desires in a finery unlike any ever seen before,” the silver tongued specialists boasted.  “We can perform magic on the loom of propaganda and weave dense misdirections that will prove impenetrable to the light, impervious to prying eyes - as well as unimpeachable legally - which will drape the virginal innocence of your intentions from the prying eyes of the peeping Toms and Tammys of the public.”
    Some of the President’s advisors had doubts that this was either wise or doable.  But the President, so desperate was he to settle the old grudge, brushed all good advice aside as peremptorily as he would a fly off his shoulder.  Others in his cabinet agreed.  Some wanted to achieve glory in this new enterprise, some to satisfy greed, others to obtain political advantage, many to hide their own irrational fears behind the honest bravery of actual troops in the field, and others merely just to go along to get along to surge ahead.
    The President put his most cunning operatives at work on the proposition and advised his Vice Minister of Graft to provide these two weavers space to work.  Soon they were hard at it.  Every day they worked from dawn to dusk weaving remarkably elaborate configurations, or so it seemed.  Because, remarkably, they used no thread.  The Vice Minister of Graft asked them, “How can you weave a fabric with no thread and produce clothing from no fabric.  If I can see there is nothing on your loom why won’t everyone else see it exactly for what it is – sheer emptiness?
    “Trust us,” they said.  “Sometimes those things you can’t see are far more potent and powerful than those things you can see.  Gullible is as gullible wants.  It’s easier to disprove something than it is to disprove nothing.  Therein lies the truth about lies, that sometimes lying less is actually lying more.  Fear is the shadowy dark inside of the imagination, that makes people imagine things that never existed but respond to them as if they actually did.”
    Still doubtful, the Minister of Graft brought in the reputedly shrewd Master of Intelligence to test this theory.  The two rogue weavers immediately went to work on him, plying their strangely nostalgic magic, weaving something from nothing and holding their indivisibly invisible work up to his scrutiny.
    “Notice the fine weave, the rare delicacy, the excellence of the material, the brilliance of the design, the quality of the workmanship,” the chief weaver explained portentously.
    The Master of Intelligence blinked twice and squinted harder.  All he saw before him was thin air.  The two weavers pantomimed, holding and folding large pieces of cloth, pretending to carry the imaginary fabric between them.  They beamed proudly, then effused.  “This is by far the finest work we have ever produced.  Anyone would be proud to don such adornment.  It’s truly fit for a king.”
    “Well, what do you think,” the Minister of Graft asked.
    The Master of Intelligence was flummoxed red with embarrassment.  He had never in his life been put in such an awkward position before.  He was not an idiot, after all, he could see there was nothing there to see.  He was afraid that the Vice Minister of Graft, who outranked him in the hierarchy, was setting him up for a fall.  But not wanting to admit he couldn’t see anything until he had figured out the game they were playing, he demurred with a noncommittal reply. “Yes, yes, indeed, interesting, very intriguing,” he said, helplessly stalling for time.  “I uh, uh, admit I’m dumbfounded by what I’m seeing here before me.  I’m frankly speechless.  But if you believe it, I believe it.”
    “Yes, I know, I understand, exactly,” the Vice Minister of Graft said ingratiatingly, with a wink in his voice and a nod in his eye, “it is a marvelous thing we see unfolding before us, wonderful to behold, isn’t it?  One would really have to be a fool not to see what is right here in front of their eyes, wouldn’t they?”  
   He said this soothingly, placing an arm around the Master of Intelligence’s shoulders as he led him to the door.  “Be sure to relay all this to the President.  He very much wants this project to go forward and succeed.”
    And that’s exactly what he did.  Meeting with the President in the perfectly square office, he did tell the President what he had seen.  Or tried to.
    The President asked him, “So how did you like my new threads?  You were truly convinced then, weren’t you?  Describe it to me, what you saw, in detail.”
    Still on his guard, feeling that he was being tested, the Master of Intelligence responded with trepidation.  “Well sir, I guess the best way to describe to you what I saw might be to say that it was beyond description, well neigh indescribable.  The weavers assured me it was the finest work they’d ever been associated with.  The artistry of their presentation was excellent beyond question.  Absolutely, I have no reason to doubt that this was fine work on their part because assuredly they have worked very hard at it.  And they are experts after all, professionals, so far be it from me to dispute what must have been obvious not only to them but to everyone else in the room as well.”
    Taking this evasion to be unequivocal support, the President responded warmly, “Good.  Good.  Thank you for your assurances. Then you must help us to convince everyone else.  Let’s send in the Secretary of Tact to see the tailors’ work.  Go with him and let him be as convinced as you.
    The Secretary of Tact went with the Master of Intelligence to see the Vice Minister of Graft.  Together they went in to see the two weavers working diligently.
    The Vice Minister of Graft spoke first.  “My God, it is just amazing to see what work you’re doing here and what progress at it you’ve made.  It’s magnificent in every detail.  It’s a true masterpiece of the fabrication of fabric if ever there has been one.  Every time I look at it it seems more convincing. Don’t you agree Master of Intelligence?”
    “Yes, I agree wholeheartedly.   Without question this is truly one of the most tantalizingly amazing fabrications I have ever been subjected to.  It’s truly astonishing what they are spinning forth here.”
    Before them the loom purred and hummed with activity and the weaver’s hands moved in delicate, practiced concert with each other just as if there really was some material there.  Of course, all the Secretary of Tact was able to see was all that was actually there - emptiness and air.  As before, the two weavers took the time to pause and repeat their well practiced charade of pretending to hold forth great swathes and swatches of invisible fabric between them.  They pointed to particular features they found to be particularly brilliant examples of their work.  They grinned and bowed humbly at the oohs and aahs of praise heaped upon them dutifully by the Vice Minister of Graft and the Master of Intelligence.
    The Secretary of Tact was flabbergasted and nonplussed.  He blanched.  He could see exactly what was going on here – nothing.  But he suddenly felt a great gnawing emptiness growing within and he found himself afraid to say so.  Did they think him a fool?  Obviously this was some sort of trap they were laying for him, setting him up for a likely scapegoat.  He knew they had never liked him and that this was a crude trick to make him be the one responsible for trying to kill the President’s pet project which would allow them to force him out.  Clearly these other two sycophants would agree to anything, and extend any ruse, and crouch to any level to foster their own advancement, but if they really thought he was going to help bail them out of the leaky boats of their own mistake filled careers they had another thing coming. He’d show them.  Three could play at this game.
    “My God, you are right.  I can hardly believe my own eyes.  It truly is extraordinary.  I have never seen such a display of uh, uh, enterprise in my life.  I had heard rumors that such amazing things were possible in the hands of tailors such as these, but I never expected this.  For really this is the most damning spectacle I have ever beheld.  The texture of the work being done here is unique to my experience, maybe even to history.  If I wasn’t seeing this with my own eyes I’d have never believed it possible.  One thing is clear above all.  We are on the road to war. Make no mistake about it.  I hadn’t realized prior to this very moment just how necessary this unnecessary war was becoming to those who wanted it. The very fact we are here today discussing this is self-evident proof that the case for fighting this war is becoming more self-fulfilling day by day.”
    “Then you mean you really are persuaded by this evidence you see before you today?” the Master of Intelligence asked, crestfallen, astounded at the cowardice of the Secretary of Tact’s unwillingness to confront the obvious.  
   “Yes, absolutely.  I’m convinced without a doubt that these weavers have put together the most amazing example of taking what would appear to an outsider to be very little, in fact, nothing at all and have turned it into something breathtaking to behold, or not, depending on your point of view.”
    “And your point of view is?” asked the Vice Minister of Graft of the Secretary of Tact.
    “Exactly like yours, Mr. Minister, exactly like yours.  I see this exactly the way you and the President do.  I refuse to admit that there is an iota of difference between us.  If you believe it, I believe it.”
    “And you will tell the President this?”  
    “Yes, I will.  And I’ll tell the public, too.”
    When they had gone the vice Minister apologized to the tailors.  "Before today I thought this whole enterprise was hanging by the thinnest of threads but I was wrong.  For when the thread is removed and it’s left hanging on thin air it has strangely become a reality even more secure, just as you predicted it would.  I bow down before your artistry.  Your specialty of gently coaxing something from nothing has been breathtaking to behold.” 
 
II    Unfortunately, in order to deceive the public the President had surrounded himself with women and men who were so practiced in the art of deception that now they had little trouble deceiving each other.  In this way, accidentally or by clever design, a subtle top down pyramid of belief built up around the illusion of the new suit of clothes that the tailors were weaving which meant that when one person said they believed in the invisible cloth (especially if they outranked you) everyone else felt compelled to agree.  
    So, when all the previously mentioned conspirators along with the collective Heads of the Department of Offensive Measures and the Mistress of Intelligence Even More Obscure conferred in a general meeting of Generals to discuss specifics and generalities, it was clear that no one was willing to dispute each other and all were determined to agree with the President who was obviously counting on their approval before he had received it.
    In fact, everyone had really been counting on the Secretary of Tact to oppose the President’s naked aggression, instead his acquiescence gave him just enough cover and credibility to go ahead with it.  Doubtful as he was, the Secretary of Tact nonetheless was determined not to be the first to pierce the President’s little bubble.  Before he went before the world to present the President’s bare faced case for war he went to the tailors first for a full outfitting of his own new suit of clothes.
    Fortunately, by the time the others arrived to the meeting the Secretary of Tact was already seated.  Even though they couldn’t tell what if anything he was wearing under the table (and needless to say no one wanted to look), clearly above it he was nude, without shirt, bare chested.  As for the Master of Intelligence, who had also been dressed by the President’s tailors, he came to the meeting naked as the day on which he was born.  Obviously they were bending over backwards to show that they had nothing to hide.
    Needless to say, the other Secretaries and Ministers of the world community were confused by this attire.  They thought it must be some kind of clever ploy to make them uncomfortable and were determined not to let this naked power play discombobulate them. In fact it was the very clothes the Secretary wasn’t wearing and claimed he was that he intended to dress up as proof of the honesty of his intentions.  So no one said anything.  As he continued in a perfectly serious vein, the titters that had originally met all the President’s naked men began to subside.  
   After all, indisputably, this was a very serious topic and these undressed men represented a very powerful nation.  It was clear despite the shocking value of their lack of attire that these representatives were willing to go to extraordinary lengths or stoop to inordinate depths to make this war proceed.  So even though eventually every one came to see that the strength of the Secretary of Tact’s threadbare case was clothed in an argument every bit as naked as he was, no one wanted to draw attention to the fact.  Some of his supporters, though decidedly in the minority, embarrassed for him or for themselves and wanting to show solidarity, soon began to discreetly remove objects of their own clothing.
    Finally, at last, the President himself, nobody’s fool, went in person to see the weavers’ art at work.  Even he who absolutely no fashion sense and could not see well could see that the cloth they were weaving was so thin and delicate as to be nearly invisible to the naked eye.  If he looked just hard enough and squinted and the light was just to the right stage of absence he would swear he could see a whisper of it, or sense some sort of diaphanous presence of materiality about him and from that surmise a hint of the presence of cloth amid the dust particles floating in air.  
    Whether he was really convinced or only trying to convince himself and everyone else around him as to the reality of cloth which obviously didn’t exist was never quite clear.  In fact it wasn't even material to the fact of the absence of material.  After all, standing atop the pyramid of belief he was the only one with no excuse to not tell the truth, as there was no one above him for him to be dependent on. 
    But he was so blinded by his desire for war, buttressed by the blustery confidence of his advisors who well knew his wishes and were determined not to disappoint him, and deluded by his own overbearing illusions of his own greatness, that frankly it didn’t seem to really matter to him whether the illusory fabrics of his argument held together or not.  When he was asked to identify the material of which his new suit of clothes was woven or assure the people that the materiality of his arguments was real or even able to be seen with the naked eye or how it was even material to his case for war, tellingly, he refused to definitively say one way or the other. 
   “It’s classified,” he said.  “Ya just gotta trust me.  After all, it’s not what is that makes the difference, but what we say it is that will be the determinator of my policy.” 
    Later he appeared with a staunch ally Tinny Blare – the Prim Minister.  After being painstakingly dressed by the Presidential tailors in their wholly imaginary garb, they appeared together at their podiums, mercifully hidden below but immodestly topless above, to answer questions from the media.  Since most of this press “corpse” was infected and innervated by the same disease of fear which had swept the land since the President’s ascension to power, all were afraid to be the first to ask the one obvious question that they should have asked – “Where are your clothes?”  Finally, one tried to broach the topic as delicately as he could.
    “But sir, do you really feel the uh, shirts you have on are enough, in common decency, to clothe the war we have just begun, in that war should generally, as the generals generally say, be clothed in more seemly and formal attire than just a desire for war itself, as if war were just casual wear or sports togs to be worn once and then tossed away, but which according to your lack of dress today, seems just aggression of the more naked sort?”
    The President was outraged at the import of even such a convoluted question as this and shot daggers at the journalist who asked the question.  “Haven’t we previously covered up this topic to your satisfaction?”
    “Well, from all appearances, apparently not.”
    "How dare you question the integrity of all my advisors who have previously told you that our rear ends are completely covered here.  The Nations United cover us, the Secretary of Tact covers us, the Master of Intelligence, etc, the list goes on and on.  We all have taken great care to cover each others’ butts here. I have weavers spinning overtime and you will insult their craft and call into question their skill?  I repeat, there can be no doubt or question as to the appropriateness of our attire here today.  It is an insult to our great friend the Prim Minister to suggest otherwise.  How could all my advisors be wrong?  How could the Secretary of Tact have presented his case to other very tactful men and not be shouted down like an ignoramus if he appeared to be hiding anything from you?  No, he has exposed himself entirely to the nation and laid our plans bare before the whole world. Where would he have hid anything?  Do you think you have such a unique grasp of wisdom that you can disagree with my Master of Intelligence or the Vice Minister of Graft?
    Even though everyone in favor of the war had already been caught at one time or another in public displays of various stages of nudity and undress, it was the self-righteousness these naked people wrapped themselves in that overwhelmed their critics. They consistently wrapped themselves in such a bombastic fabric of persiflage that finally truth itself was lost beneath an elaborate gown of lies. 
   The disgraced journalist who asked the question was soon cowed by this Presidential disrobing.  Like children in school afraid they might be called on next, his peers were caught looking down at their feet while their colleague was thoroughly dressed down by a thoroughly undressed President insisting he was fully clothed. 
Afterwards nobody would even speak to the offending journalist.  He was called biased and a coward by the war party’s nakedly vicious acolytes for trying to undercut the basis of their fears in which they wrapped themselves in lieu of clothes as barrier to the truth everywhere apparent around them.  Soon many other journalists, too, afraid to be different and to speak their minds and risk drawing down the wrath of the nakedly aggressive proponents of the conflict upon them, also stopped wearing clothes in public.
 
III    Of course, once the awful war began it soon became clear that the fabric of logic which was stated to be so strong and seamless prior to it, even if the naked truth had been visible to the naked eye – otherwise known as nonexistent - began to unwind and unravel like the wind.  The falsely stated, dishonest rationale for the war was soon uncovered for all to see in all its unadorned ugliness.  There never had been any legitimate cover for the war to begin with.  Even at that though, the coverage of the war, best described as a cover-up prior to it, when after the war the President’s suit and briefs for the war were exposed as an invisible tissue of transparent lies by the (newly revivified) press corps; it was damned by the nakedly crooked Vice Minister of Graft as a real cover-up (!) of the naked truth by the press’s coverage that was finally uncovering the truth!
    Still, it didn’t matter to the President.  He was utterly unrepentant. Rather than coming clean, he continued to brag about the attractiveness of his new threads and soon banned all mirrors in his vicinity and insisted that all of his staff go unclothed.  He was so unsurprised and callous and indifferent for starting an unjust and unwinnable war that many wondered if he hadn’t known that the tailors he’d hired were fraudulent operators from the outset. 
    With the President’s odd intransigence, the delusions turned even more elaborate among his jaded, naked advisors, who were soon competing with one another to see who could be the most nude.  When one of his staff had a new item of clothing that they claimed they had bought from the two weavers, next day others, after their own obligatory trip to the tailors who obligingly raised their prices in response to the increased demand for their nonexistent wear, would show up allegedly “wearing” something better. Naturally the weavers became very, very rich for their efforts.  After all, the costs they charged for the material they sold were real even if the material they were selling was imaginary. 
    In this way, paradoxically, there began not an arms race or even a horse race but a clothes horse race among the President’s thoroughly naked advisors.  Nudity actually became appallingly fashionable among the fascistic leaning fashionistas in charge.  But no matter how effusively each praised each other’s habiliments and taste it didn’t change the fact that as they walked away from each other, each still knew the other had no clothes.  Clearly they believed in the principle of “turn the other cheek” to thine enemies (and friends, too), just not in exactly the same biblical spirit in which the dictum had been intended.
   Far from being shocked at this complete reversal of our national mores, many in society, having a vested interest in the President’s policy which had nothing whatsoever at all to do with the misbegotten and misrepresented war, not wanting their hero to look so embarrassed and alone, in solidarity with his naked impotence and incompetence, obligingly appeared before him only in the unclad solidarity and splendor of their own birthday suits.  Every time the President would speak before hand picked audiences his aides ensured that anyone clad was denied entry so that before him all he would see was a crowd as pink and fleshy as pigs in a wallow, just as naked as he was, so he wouldn’t appear out of place and have to address the difference. 
   Now previously in our history public nakedness was against the law.  Now, however, the Attorney General of Injudiciousness actually put forward laws which would have banned the wearing of clothes even in the privacy of ones’ own home.  Speaking of privacy, it was said to be outdated and an insidious act against the government.  Therefore, doors, window shades and curtains were banned so police and neighbors could see in to enforce any breach of the anti-clothing regulations. Even sympathetic members of the Courts, who had to wear robes, were rumored to really be completely naked underneath.
   So too, many pseudo religious people on talk shows and think tanks were shameless in their scandalous defense of the indefensible scandal of the war.  They not only went around naked themselves but said that this was what the founders of the country had really intended. This was the real truth, they insisted, whereas clothing was just a false apparatus and quaint innovation.  In this changing, dangerous world they swore we no longer could afford the luxury of clothing.  They claimed that only by returning to the virginal nakedness of Adam and Eve in our own lives could we retrieve liberty from the troublesomely tyrannical distinction of good and evil and wrong and right to which our leaders had become enslaved. To this end an effort was made to ban apples and even new-born babies were never to be swaddled. 
    At the same time, people who refused to participate in this mad, frenzied apostasy and misadventure and actually chose to keep their clothes on were increasingly and vehemently condemned by the rabid nudists as traitors to the nation.  The war which had, predictably, given its dishonest inception, gone so badly it was already lost in every practical sense, was said to be necessary to continue so we wouldn’t lose even though every day we continued it we only lost worse.  Those against the war were accused by the ones who had promoted it of somehow being responsible for the eventual defeat their complete malfeasance in promoting it had already made inevitable. Of course, they also said that wearing clothes was clearly a promotion of immorality and nudity an exercise of modesty.  
   Eventually only the bravest people could go out in public dressed and only a few of them dared proclaim the President was really naked even as he pretended to be elegantly clothed.  Even when an honestly dressed person would confront one of hte President's naked advisors with the truth of what was plainly evident before them, down to every pore, pimple, wrinkle, mole and corpuscle of their nudity, the naked still refused to acknowledge that they were naked for all to see.  Instead, like children in denial, they seemed to believe that if they could not see they could not be seen.  So they just shut their eyes and refused to acknowledge that everyone could see just how naked they really were, and went on pretending that they were as perfectly well dressed, truthful, modest and covered up as any devout Muslim woman in a burka covered head to toe.
   In summer time of course, the growing nudity of this generation of the population generally only resulted in a few bug bites, bee stings and sun burns, in winter though, the duress they put themselves under and were willing to put others through, was shocking and shiverous, so stupid and stubborn were these people to continue their investment in an unjust and unwinnable war.
    But we should hasten to assure you here, those whose minds tend in such sordid directions, that none of this was of a prurient nature.  Rather the reverse.  Given the severe unattractiveness of those who were habitually without clothes, their interior charms mirroring their exterior ones, they were more repulsive than appealing.  Generally, to ensure sanity, upon seeing such people naked, all lubricious thoughts immediately fled from one’s mind.
   To illustrate the necessity of such caution, once a particularly naked exposition of the propriety of the war was put forward by the President, the Vice Minister of Graft and various old and wrinkled members of Congress.  Brazenly forgetting the television cameras were on, when they inadvertently stepped out from behind their podiums to emphasize the points they were making, many instances of hysterical blindness were simultaneously reported among the viewers in many different parts of the nation.  
   To fight this no clothes scourge, an underground movement to counteract it began to spontaneously spread across the country in the form of a new chastity movement.  Over time the birthrate began to drop.  Sex shops began to close their doors to be replaced with anti-strip joints, where clothing was mandatory and dancers would not only start fully clothed but put on overcoats as paying customers watched breathlessly and threw money at the dressers.  
    Eventually even the legislature was split.  All by now knew that the king had no clothes but they were divided as to what to do about it.  After all, no one had the power to make the President dress if he chose to go around in the all together.  Just as no one had the ability to retrieve the mistakes of the sordid past and recover the lives and costs of the war already lost, which only steadily continued to mount the way heaps of ashes replace a slowly burning forest.
    Many of the legislators who had abdicated their responsibilities to the country at the outset of the war by not bothering to discover whether the President actually was wearing clothes or not, claimed after the war was so far and so badly advanced, that they could hardly be expected to start doing their jobs now.  
 
    Of course, none of this was anything like the hardship of the war itself which raged on with no end in sight.  Daily life, limbs and treasure were being squandered.  Because the President knew that once the war ended the clear sighted judgment of history would descend upon him without all the obfuscatory illusions that propaganda could provide, he feared he was sure to be judged naked as a jay bird for all future generations to see.  They would surely gaze and wonder at the folly of such times as these. 
   And so the war simply had to continue to limp indefinitely along to continue to cover up the naked dishonesty of its own instigation.  It was not as if the President didn’t have an exit strategy, when as a private citizen he would go back to wearing clothes, he did – but only for himself.  He would be out of office in two years.  Unfortunately he just didn’t have an exit strategy for the troops, who were doomed to remain just where they were for as long as he was in office.  
   The fact that it had all been a costly disaster which harmed the country in every way seemed not to have penetrated his care or conscious at all.  The President without clothes and all his supporters didn’t really care as long as he didn’t have to face or acknowledge the fact of his own repellant nakedness in the tiny mirrors of his own mind.