"How did this man ever get elected president?"

[yesthattom]

Real Time with Bill Maher had a great answer this weekend. John Cougar Melloncamp was on the panel. He explained that people in the heartlands are honest people, and honest people expect others to be honest. Thus, when politicians lie, they believe them.

In other news...

• Bush makes surprise visit to Iraqi to tell them that the war is going well.
• What will Bush do when he retires? Well Carter started 3 different projects to save the world. Bush Jr. is just going to, you know, make some money or somethin’. Da kos has 10 better suggestions.

Comments

[arkham1010.livejournal.com]

No offense, but.....George Bush is a giant dickhead.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

of course, the reason for "surprise" visits by senior staff is because it's so fabulously unsafe that they can't announce the visits beforehand.

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

The response from John Mellon Cougarcamp makes total sense to me. I was in Kansas visiting my small town farming family for Thanksgiving two years ago. My grandmother was approaching her 100th birthday, and we were talking about what we should do to celebrate it. One of the things mentioned was the option of having a letter sent from the President. One of my aunts said, "No, we can't do that. She'll be really angry if she gets a letter from him." Further conversation revealed a real sense of betrayal among many of my family members. They really DID believe him. And when they finally, after years of having evidence thrown at them, figured out that he didn't actually have their best interests at heart, and in fact was actively working against their interests, there was this deep sense of betrayal. Because they really, really did believe him.

It's kind of sad, really.

Honest People

[catness.livejournal.com]

Yes, my mother was the same, and all of her family. She came from an entire (maybe the last?) generation of people who believed that our leaders were there because they were the best men for the job. She thought Bush Sr. was a very good men, and didn't have any kind of mental checks or balances against inconsistencies in that viewpoint. Our president was our *president*, and that's all you needed to know. Of course he was good, strong, and true, because otherwise he wouldn't be the leader of the free world.

She died the Saturday after Clinton was elected.* She didn't vote for him, and she also thought his whole demeanor and attitude was kind of curious. She was vaguely pleased about that saxophone thing, but even though he was not Her Kind Of Leader, and she didn't want him in office, she Still Believed.





* I'm not saying these things were related.

[seasings.livejournal.com]

Exactly! My middlestates (now fundi xian) brother used to berate me about my "pessimism" and distrust concerning the present administration and especially about the war. He's now changed his tune (a little). Da Kos' suggestions are hilarious.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Yep. This is true of Chicago, too, in an inverted way. All politicians are assumed to be bent, so whatever they say doesn't matter - you just got to know to whom they are beholden and look at their record and see how they've voted. You trust their consistency, not their honesty.

For example, one socially-far-left (but economically conservative) Chicagoan I know voted for Bush Jr. in the second election... I asked him what the *%&#&%^ he was doing voting against pretty much everything he believed in. He replied that with Bush he knew where the man stood. I replied, "Yeah, against everything you believe," and he just shrugged. A remarkable trust of consistency despite whatever the man says. Daley gets re-elected for much the same reasons, despite all kinds of bizarre city problems, and the people he most benefits are actually the least likely to vote for him.

That's a reason that Obama may not survive full-out scrutiny. He's a product of the Chicago machine and his (city/state) voting record, adviser Axelrod, and economic/political affiliations make it very clear. Which sucks, because, I as a Chicagoan was all into him as a candidate before I decided to look back further than his own people were leaving online. He talks a great game, but he's never actually executed on it. Bluntly: he's no Dean. Edwards isn't either, but he's got a voting record that comes close to matching his rhetoric.

[lilbjorn.livejournal.com]

He explained that people in the heartlands are honest people, and honest people expect others to be honest.

... and that's why they believe their preacher-man when he says that the invisible man in the sky said they should vote for Bush.

[cos]

In 2004, a friend and I came upon an old lady's home while canvassing for ACT - we were to ask her what her most important issues were. Her first one was immigration (couched in such odd language we didn't understand her at first), her second was the price of housing, then she said "and that war". It was terrible that people had to die, but what's one to do? They attacked us, so we had to go to war.

Later, after we'd collected all the information our survey called for, I asked out of curiosity: "You said 'they' attacked us" and confirmed she meant Iraq. How did Iraq attack us, I asked? "Those planes, they flew into the buildings" "But those people were not from Iraq. They were Saudis and Egyptians." "Oh, but I thought they were from Iraq, or they were working from Iraq..." "No, they were working from Afghanistan. Even president Bush has said Iraq was not involved in 9/11" (only earlier that year!)

She stopped and thought for a minute, and said huh... "people have been telling me this war was for the oil, and maybe it really is. We do need that oil, but people shouldn't have to die for it."

So I asked her if she could think back and remember why it was that she thought Iraq had attacked us? Where had she heard or read that, who had told her? This was the most revealing part of the experience for me, the part I learned the most from. Because, you see, she couldn't recall ever getting any such information from any source. She hadn't read that, or heard it. Nobody had told her so. She tried to reconstruct her thoughts and figured that it was this: The USA had been attacked. Then the USA invaded Iraq. Obviously, the only reason we would do that is because they had attacked us. She trusted our leaders and our process, and believed their actions must make sense, so she filled in the appropriate blanks that made them make sense.

[kingfox.livejournal.com]

I've heard that line of thought far too often over the past few years, and it terrifies the shit out of me.

[dannyman.livejournal.com]

I like to think there will always be brush to clear back on the ranch . . .