9 October 2004
My Morons are Bigger Than Your Morons
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My friend nitecrawler has written an impassioned article in which he argues that the nearly half of American voters who have decided to vote for Bush and Cheney are "fucking morons". His reasoning is hard to argue with.
But I'm going to quibble with it anyway. {smile}
He's probably right about a lot of the Bush supporters. Real intellectual midgets. They probably buy "regalis" from spammers, buy lottery tickets with their "lucky numbers" every day, and think it's great when a new Wal-Mart opens in their town because they think it'll help the local economy.
But I know people who are voting for Bush and I know they're not all idiots. Some of them aren't persuaded by the evidence that the president is lying and serving the destructive interests of his class, because they don't want to believe it. He's a Republican, and so are they, and they accept as an article of faith that Republicans are more responsible than Democrats. Others do see his warts, but they don't care. By their values, a corrupt Republican is still better than a tax-raising, social-program-loving, gay-whale-hugging Democrat. Their take on Watergate was, "At least McGovern didn't get elected."
But I think the real idiots in this election are the ones who are going to choose the outcome: the small percentage of voters who are still undecided. How can anyone still be in doubt about which candidate to vote for?
Granted, there are times when it's hard to tell the difference between them, like when Kerry says that he also would've invaded Iraq, even knowing as Bush did that there was no real evidence of WMD or a threat to the U.S. But you don't need to take your mind off "America's Funniest Top Model Make-Over" very long to figure out which of them you trust least. Even the dolt who says, "We can't change presidents in the middle of a war," is doing better than that: he's at least drawn a line from a fact (we're at war) through an opinion (see above) to a decision (keep Bonzo).
And don't try to tell me that they're "weighing the issues", because anyone who isn't engaged enough in politics to have developed opinions about the issues these two do disagree on and their relative importance, can't have the attention span to still be working on an answer. Not if they're cognitively functional enough to be making decisions for themselves (and not all people are).
What we have here are people who are either incapable of understanding the question, or are pathologically impaired in their ability to make a decision.
And these are the people who are going to decide who's going to be president for the next four years.
# 2004-10-09 06:32 PM | TrackBackThis is one of Eleanor Clift's best articles. She really lays it all out, and concludes by saying:
"The Duelfer report, Bremer’s words and Rumsfeld’s confession may take some time to sink in with voters. It’s like a bad marriage, says Wilson. You have to first come to grips with the fact that you’re in a bad relationship. Then you have to decide to do something about it—and finally you have to muster the courage to go out with somebody new. The country has a lot invested in Bush as protector in chief. Admitting that confidence was misplaced is hard, and that’s what makes this such a close race."
In short, "they don't want to believe it."
So we have either half an electorate which through stupidity and ignorance, can't tell a Bush from a hole in the ground, or they're in serious denial. American politics as a big bad marriage with 100 million codependents. I'm not sure which notion depresses me more. Or maybe it's a little of both.
When I conjure up an idea of the American electorate, I usually wind up with a vision of mob rule as displayed on the Simpsons. People who are swayed by the latest catch phrase, who switch allegiances at the drop of a hat, with little or no thought or reflection. Homer of course being the leader of the pack.
I'd like to think better of my fellow citizens, and I do respect those, on any side of an issue, who come to a conclusion and form an opinion based on conscious thought and reflection. But conscious thought and reflection are things I don't really detect from most Bush supporters I see.
Yes, maybe they are really in denial after all. You can't have the facts presented to you in the press every day, and on the other hand, have the president lie to your face on TV, and still think that he's a truthful man and an inspiring leader.
I mainly call these people stupid because I don't really want to sit and try and analyze them all day. Doesn't really matter what their motives are anyway because the effect will be the same. They are going to try their best to get Bush elected, and if they succeed, then they will have performed a very stupid act, regardless of their reasons.
I have a lot of reasons for detesting American politics, but one of the main ones is that I find it superficial to the point of madness. Kerry isn't as bad as Bush by a long shot, but he's forced to play the same game, which is to resort to simple phrases and slogans and repeat them over and over ad nauseam. If I hear "help is on the way" one more time I'm going to puke. Now here's Kerry, a smart, reflective man, being reduced to talking down to the electorate because that's how the game is played.
Someone (I can't remember who) studied presidential debates over the years, from the Lincoln-Douglas debates to the present (which was the 2000 campaign when he released his study). And he found that the Lincoln Douglas debate was on about a college sophomore level (when studying vocabulary, the quality and intelligence of the arguments, etc.) and they've been going downhill ever since. By the 2000 Bush-Gore debates, we were down to around a 6th grade level.
Bush is at least operating at about a 4th grade level, it seems to me. "Believe me because I say so." And Kerry is forced to dumb down his presentation so as not to confuse people with his penchant for nuance!
Posted by: don at October 10, 2004 08:36 PM
