Reply #9: I'm worried about the empowerment of the stupid...... [View All]

[Jade Fox]

In many ways the Bush years have functioned as a sort of "Revenge of the Nudges"--that roughly one third of the population who are so unthinking they still support Bush, and are still highly susceptible to manipulation by Rovian tactics. Filled with resentment and crippled by low self-esteem, these people love patriotism in the form of being told they are better than the foreigners they know nothing about. They love being given a scape-goat to hate, and an enemy to project their fears onto.

The empowerment of this section of the population has been the current administrations most brilliant move. We blanche at the idiocy spouted by the likes of Anne Coulter and Glen Beck, but the very things Coulter and Beck now get away with saying in public have been a huge affirmation to those whose minds follow the same paths. Those people now feel that their own ignorance, prejudice, and small mindedness doesn't mean their opinions aren't just as good as some snotty know-it-all like Dan Rather. Hell, they're better! With the handy device of labeling everything you don't like as "Liberal Media", the reality that some information is better than other information, because it is true or has been provided by those who actually know something about the topic, is a thing of the past.

Conservatives in general have also been encouraged to see themselves as victims, victims of Liberals and the Democrats. Once you decide you have been victimized, you no longer feel the obligation to play fairly. (I saw this recently here on DU when someone posted a video of Coulter stomping off the air because she wasn't happy with people interrupting her. During the same broadcast, Sean Hannity never shut his mouth, talking over the opposition constantly. It's okay when he does it, right Anne?) That the Republicans have mostly been in power for the last 40 years means nothing to those wallowing in victimization. (I believe the corruption of elections is deeply rooted in this sense of victimization. They don't have to win fairly--they've been victimized!)

We can get rid of Bushco. But what are we going to do with the monsters let out of their cages in the form of Religious Totalitarians, would be Brownshirts, and Empire-building warmongers?