pragmatismo

"a certain percentage of Americans was so traumatized by the September 11th terrorist attacks that simply conjuring up the memory of "I stood in the rubble of Ground Zero, dammit" stimulates a knee-jerk reaction of support for Bush," but perhaps there's something deeper at work. Describing a poll that found links between endorsing Dubya's re-election and belief in Bushite lies about weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda ties in Iraq, I speculated more recently about "a four-year experiment in self-inflicted mass brainwashing," a phenomenon that Juan Cole more eruditely referred to the next day as "a two-party epistemology" -- in essence, competing versions of reality based on what one's political beliefs are.
A few days ago, World on Fire had a keen essay on the separation between "argument versus policy," the tendency of the Orwell Bush administration to make up whatever theories or pseudo-facts were necessary to justify their actions. These arguments have usually involved the pressing of emotional buttons like "supporting the troops," avenging September 11th, not backing down to "terrorists," loyalty to the president, etc.
After nearly three years of having these buttons pushed relentlessly, even some non-hardcore Dubya supporters have invested so much in the Bushite scams that they can't bear to admit they've been swindled. To put it another way, they've gone so far down the road of fantasy that seeing how far they'd have to walk back makes the thought of turning around genuinely painful. And so they won't turn until they're literally forced to by the obstacles of harsh reality. It's easy to change a single opinion, but much harder to shake off an entire philosophy that has been built up through repeated emotional admonitions to "stay the course."
So, it's a slow process as disparate souls reach their individual breaking points, not a sudden flash that enlightens everyone at once. But one by one, they're figuring it out. Needlenose May 10, 04
prmn