timberlandko wrote:Just who's stupid here ...
OK, let's run with that.
I'm not angry that George W. Bush is president. He was elected, finally, which is what we do in America (if you overlook the fact that literally every irregularity in the voting benefited the GOP). I'm disappointed that he's president, but I am not angry about it, per se.
No, my anger is reserved for the half of the voting population of this country which has stopped thinking to such a degree that such a man could be handed the power of the office of President of the United States. This man had no business being president once, let alone twice. And that this isn't obvious to 51% of our population is what is disturbing.
Even watching the dedication of the Clinton library yesterday I was struck again by George W. Bush's physically demonstrated foolishness, not to mention arrogance. And that was before he opened his mouth.
I imagine how a third-grader awarded the starring role as king in the school play would portray that role, and that is what I see when President Bush crosses my television screen.
It is manifested in the almost comical faux power strut, arms swinging up high. It is manifested by the obsession with might and power, demonstrated by the misuse of our military for personal revenge, corporate gain, and -- by his own admission -- political capital, and the dictatorial style with which he is governing (the latest example: the purging of the CIA of anyone who isn't loyal to him. Yet we are supposed to believe that no pressure was put on these people to provide fabricated evidence to support invading Iraq?).
His has been a tenure of relentless power grabs, subtle and not so subtle, of immodest reminders that he is our "leader", of turning a deaf ear to anyone with a difference of opinion or information that does not comport with his agenda, often resulting in the brutal smearing of such people. Since 9/11, numerous Administration members have spoken brazenly and without shame chastising anyone who dares question the president.
These are hardly American, let alone Christian, principles.
America is not a dictatorship, or at least hasn't been until now. America is about the People, not one man, but I feel that slipping away. However, I do not blame Bush for this.
Karl Rove & Co. have engineered this slide into dictatorial rule by appealing to what is most base in human beings: fear, hatred, and a false sense of moral superiority; in short, ignorance.
The division in America is not in fact drawn by moral issues, much as the media would like us to believe. All human beings struggle with their demons and make mistakes occasionally -- except for our mistake-free president. Rather, the lines dividing us are those of class and intellect.
A wave of anti-intellectualism is spreading like an insurgency in a certain Middle Eastern country. But this begs the question, who is really calling who dumb?
It is taken for granted that those in the blue states think those in the red states are intellectually inferior. Red staters defiantly lash out at the "liberal elite" in the northeast. They defensively claim that Democrats don't grasp the values of rural America and that until we do, we will be lost in the wilderness of intellect, informed analysis, and sophisticated and contemplative thought.
Huh? These are bad things?
Despite the pummeling the left has taken by moral, compassionate conservatives who say they want America unified by calling their counterparts unpatriotic, immoral, ungodly, un-American, communists and all the rest, those who hurl such slurs tremble with rage when they interpret criticism from the left as calling them dumb. They also swear revenge by promising to send the country evermore rightward and dumbward.
But whether red staters are inherently more stupid than blue staters (they aren't) is beside the point. It is illogical to even make such a claim, just as it is illogical to claim that Democrats are more immoral than Republicans. Intelligence, like morality, has nothing to do with political affiliation or philosophy or geography.
No, the issue is who is
treating the red staters as though they are stupid, and I would argue that no one is doing so more than Karl Rove and his lickspittles.
Consider that John Kerry spoke to the American people as though he was having an actual dialogue with them. He spoke of the complexities of the world. He did not dumb down his words. He spoke in complete conceptual terms. He treated the voters as intelligent adults who can think and understand the intent and context of what he said without need for follow-up explanations.
President Bush spoke in slogans and clichès and relied heavily on buzzwords. That is treating your audience like they are morons.
I can hear Rove now: "Mr. President, just repeat 'He can run, but he cannot hide' over and over! They'll eat it up! They'll cheer you on, and you will not have actually said anything or need to explain why, after being attacked by religious fundamentalists on 9/11, we spent 200 billion dollars and 1300 American lives to attack a secular country that did not attack us (and by sheer coincidence you had said in 1999 that you'd like to invade to get political capital and to be seen as a great leader and commander-in-chief!)"
Or:
"Mr. President, go with that 'more liberal than the senior senator from Massachusetts' thing again! They'll be roaring so loud, they will not hear you when you explain to them why it is their incomes are down, their tax burden is up, but our millionaire friends, the Haves and Have-Mores, are making more money and paying fewer taxes!"
Sadly, eat it up they did, every time. That and all his myriad of tough talk and simplistic slogans. Why? Because they recognized it; it sounded familiar. It sounded kind of like something Arnold or Clint would say. It hit them in their guts (as opposed to their heads). It demanded no thought or scrutiny. I was waiting at times for Bush to jingle his keys at his adoring and pre-screened audiences to send them into a total frenzy of glee (and diversion). And my thought was always, how could they stand to be treated this way? It was painful to watch.
Forgetting for a bit that he is president of the
entire United States, Bush insulted every resident of Massachusetts by mentioning the name of that state with a disgust usually reserved for Saddam Hussein. Of course he neglected to remind voters that he got the brunt of his education in Massachusetts and all of it in New England.
I never heard President Clinton insult a state for being conservative, or for any reason for that matter. I never heard Clinton target individual senators, as Bush did Ted Kennedy, despite being targeted for destruction by his political opponents like no president before him. George Bush was clearly appealing to base stereotypes and visceral emotion to get a rise out of his audience. On the instruction of Karl Rove, and Ralph Reed, and Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson, and James Dobson, and...
That is treating your constituents like they are dumb.
What I find even more amazing is those Bush supporters who seem to denigrate their own intelligence. They like Bush because he's "one of them." They like that he governs strictly from instinct. They like that he has no need for contemplation, reading, or getting objective information. They like that he is not an intellect. They like that he comes off as simple. That he'd be fun to have a beer with is sufficient.
Admitting to their simplicity and lack of intellect, they seem determined to bring America down to their level rather than doing the "hard work" of raising themselves up to join the enlightened, the educated, and the informed. Not just the 57 million Americans who didn't vote for Bush but most of the rest of the world, in fact, where people speak multiple languages, have more than one college degree, and live in cities that celebrate diversity rather than condemn it. Why make America "elite"? Let's try a new, unimproved, regressive America where the uninformed rule. But then let's bitch when liberal elites call us dumb.
Is it really so shocking that the places that voted for John Kerry were overwhelmingly the areas of greatest culture, diversity, the homes of the nation's finest universities? When red staters angrily reject the blue state "elite", what they are rejecting is
brains; intelligence, enlightenment. Calling 57 million people elite is the same as saying, "You think you're so smart," which is an obvious indication of feelings of inferiority.
Don't we
want America to be elite? Don't red staters
want to be informed and educated? What is it about the voters in the heartland that made them want America to be led by a group of bullies who have rejected the "reality-based community" in favor of creating their own reality, a bizarre and cruel one which relies on a war mentality in all affairs; business, political, global?
I had every hope and belief that the majority of voters would see through Rove's machinations and mistreatment of them. No one was more disillusioned than I to see so many acquiesce to Rove's belief that those folks are just dumb enough to be manipulated in so blatant a fashion. It was like listening to a battered woman saying he does it because he loves her. But no one was laughing harder at the red staters' expense than were Bush, Rove and Cheney. No one. The sound of high fives at Republican gatherings on election night no doubt reached the cacophony of a trawler of fish hitting the deck. And sure, a lot of those cheers were meant for Bush's win, but make no bones about it, a lot were for having successfully exploited the ignorance of so many of their own countrymen.
The formula is pretty simple: if you don't want to be called dumb, don't allow yourself to be treated the way the Bush campaign treated you. But if you must, do not expect the rest of us to join you.
Brains are stronger than bullets. They are the antidote to fear, the stimulus for courage, and the best hope to relieve the suffering of those who have no work, who cannot afford their medicines nor a doctor, and to stop the bloodshed in the desert.
