Recently, I have found myself watching The Bachelor. I don't intend to—I don't even know when it's on, but every time I turn on the TV, I find some generically handsome guy studying a group of attractive young women, most of whom look exactly alike, to discern which among them will be his bride.

This is what's known as a "reality show," a form of entertainment so popular at the present time that it seems one of these shows is being born every minute. The newest is Mr. Personality, hosted by Monica Lewinsky. In this rendition of "reality" a single woman has to choose between a group of young men who may or may not look exactly alike–we won't know until the show's finale, because they are wearing masks. (Personally, I would not date a guy in a mask.)

I don't know why I watch The Bachelor—everything about it is utterly idiotic, and because I only seem to tune in for the last twenty minutes each week, I don't really understand what's going on. Someone in my aerobics class had to explain to me that the house the Bachelor lives in is not his own, but is rented by the show.

I had suspected this because it looked exactly like the house in the previous series, The Bachelorette. Trista Rehn, the former bachelorette, a physical therapist and former Miami Heat cheerleader, in a surprise upset, chose shy, poetry-penning firefighter Ryan over Charlie, a slick, suave account executive. It was in this palace on a hill somewhere above Los Angeles that Trista wept as she bade Charlie farewell, sent him away in a limousine, and pledged her troth to Ryan. I had seen her sobbing in the same limousine during the previous series, in which a bachelor, visibly distraught, chose another woman over Trista, although my sources tell me their engagement is already off. As he watched Trista drape herself across Ryan like a boa constrictor, I'll bet Charlie was sorry.

Occasionally, over the last month, I have also accidentally tuned into the other popular new reality TV show. I never intended to watch that show either, since I found its content considerably more unpleasant than the real reality shows—bombs going off, buildings collapsing into rubble, people being carted off to hospitals, and occasionally, speeches by a guy in a large white house that doesn't belong to him.

I always thought I had a pretty firm grasp on what the word "reality" meant, but lately it's become clear that I have no idea. I always thought that "reality" denoted "events that actually happened," but lately it's come to mean "events that have been manipulated into being entertainment for a mass audience." In the world of the Old Reality, Trista would never have met Ryan in the first place—he lived in Vail, and they have nothing in common—and would probably not have gotten engaged to him at all. And in the Old Reality, 70 percent of the American people would not have given a show like War in Iraq such high Nielsen ratings.

But in the New Reality, people are able, even willing, to believe impossible things and call them Reality. In Credulity Nouveau, the old, unpleasant concept of Reality is replaced by dreamy television images: long-stemmed red roses; slim, middle-class blonde twenty-somethings who look just like their Glamorshots; marching, dark-haired men cheering the demise of evil dictatorship and thanking America for their liberation. Seventy percent of the American people evidently inhabit this television world of make-believe.

Some years ago, while I still lived in England but was contemplating a return to America, I happened to see a Geraldo episode on late-night television in which a group of overweight, unattractive Americans insisted that Elvis Presley had not in fact died, but had faked his death and still roamed the earth as a messiah perpetually on the verge of return. I was so horrified by this display of lunacy that I delayed my return to the U.S. for several years, but finally came to the conclusion that it would be possible to live in the States without meeting or ever being affected by the Elvis People.

Who knew that I was wrong, and that the Elvis People population would increase to 45% at the time of the last presidential election, thereby giving now-President Bush enough votes to be declared winner by the Supreme Court.

Now, as the Circle of Elvis has widened to include an additional 25% of the population, I'd like to advance a theory of my own. As I flipped the channels between The Bachelor and CNN the other day, I suddenly realized what is really going on.

Right before George W. Bush took (or if you prefer, stole) office, I toured the West Wing with an out-going Clinton cabinet member. We noted that while previous vice presidents had operated from the Old Executive Office Building, an office was being built in the West Wing for Dick Cheney. Everyone on the tour, which consisted entirely of out-going Clinton staffers, tittered about this in what they thought was a discreet manner, since it was obvious that Cheney, not Bush, was going to run the new government.

Who is Dick Cheney? Where did he come from? A brief browse of the internet led me to an article by John Dean, former White House counsel under Nixon, which states that "in 1969, Dick Cheney joined the Nixon Administration—serving in a number of positions at the Cost of Living Council, and later the Office of Economic Opportunity. According to the History News Network Web site, "When Nixon was forced from office, Cheney helped Vice President Ford make the transition to the Oval Office and in 1975, Cheney became President Ford's White House chief of staff."

When we look at the dates, I think the Reality becomes clear: when Richard Nixon left office, he turned into Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney's repeated trips to hospitals that he claimed were because of heart attacks are undoubtedly repeated bouts of plastic surgery; when Nixon disappeared from the public eye, a stunt double (probably the real Saddam Hussein) was used for his public appearances, and Nixon / Cheney was born.

Consider the evidence: according to Dean, who ought to know, the Bush-Cheney presidency seeks to enhance the powers of the presidency and decrease those of Congress; it was only because of that little Watergate blunder that Congress was able to regain its power under Nixon. Cheney, in the style of Nixon, "seeks to place a blanket freeze on information." If the war on Iraq reminded anyone of Vietnam, it's because Nixon, (who, as Dean points out, kept ratcheting up the Vietnam War while Congress wasn't in session) clearly is Cheney and was the architect of both. The Patriot Act, people being held without trial: pure Nixon. Cheney probably even has an Enemies List, and all of us who were against his most recent war are on it.

Does this sound crazy? Perhaps, but I don't think it's any crazier than the staging of a "pre-emptive war" ostensibly because Iraq was threatening us with Weapons of Mass Destruction, weapons they couldn't even manage to use when we were marching into their capital. It's not any crazier than spending $20 billion to conduct that war, with another $50 billion budgeted for the aftermath, while education budgets are being slashed; it's not crazier than "liberating" a city but allowing its national treasures, as well as its polio and cholera caches, to be stolen by looters. It's not any crazier than Bechtel and Halliburton being awarded the post-war contracts. It's not any crazier than the way people who questioned the war were accused of being unpatriotic and not "supporting our troops." It's not any crazier than 70 percent of the American people supporting this exercise in political manipulation, mass brainwashing, empire-building, and corporate feeding frenzy.

Trust me, Nixon and Cheney are the same person. It's the only explanation that makes sense.

And somewhere in the bowels of the White House, Elvis, in chains, weeps for us all.