It’s Your Party; Cry if You Want to
When I see the latest poll results, I wonder: are there really so many people who believe George W. Bush is an effective President, or are the numbers reflective of people deluded by party loyalty? Can they, having been told by the GOP elite and their functionaries and flunkies that Bush is the nominee and the man to follow for the benefit of the country at large and the future of the free world (reminiscent of the traditional listing of royal functions in Britain isn’t it? “Protector of the faith . . .” blah blah blah), can these people be simply responding according to their identification of themselves as “Republicans”? Is this some kind of political autism?

Presented by an alternative after four years of disasterous policies, such people respond with echolalia: “Flip-flop,” they say, or “swift boat.” “Big-L liberal,” “tax-and-spend.” “Nationalized health care” (oh, God forbid). Such phrases trip from their tongues as if they have meaning outside the campaign. Political reality is so much more complex, and we have whole generations who refuse to look beyond chess-board metaphors and really try to understand the meaning of political actions, not to mention hosts of politicians who encourage such blindness or practice it themselves, their interests limited only to the next election.

Does anyone believe that if Gore had been in the White House in 2001 that we would not have pursued al Qaeda into Afghanistan? Does anyone believe that Iraq presented such an immediate threat that before our work in the one nation was complete we needed to depose another dictator? (Oh, yeah, the House of Representatives.) Oh, well, go ahead and vote for another four years of lies, then.