Irrational support

[BUSHOUT]

On Sunday mornings I look forward to watching C-SPAN's Washington Journal. The program allows members of the public to voice their opinions on their support or disdain for President George Bush and Sen. John Kerry. After watching for several months now, I'm struck by the glowing intellectual differences between Bush and Kerry supporters.

Kerry supporters articulate their dissatisfaction with Bush by talking about issues, i.e. a misguided war in Iraq, skyrocketing health-care costs, perceived corruption within the Bush administration, the budget deficit, etc. They do so with a reasonable amount of clarity, and most seem to avoid emotionally charged rhetoric.

The Bush supporters, it seems, do exactly the opposite. In fact one fourth to one half of them say such irrational things as, “I finally feel like God is in the White House,” or “If we don't vote for Bush, the United Nations will take over America.” The other half sticks to the “He's the only one that will keep us safe from the terrorists” mantra.

This belief that Bush is God-like is as irrational as believing that upon blowing yourself up for your God you will be delivered to paradise.

read rest here

[flordehinojos]

1. and sometimes one has to wonder if the hosts for the C-Span Journal do not

agree with the Bush callers. They seem to give more air time to the Bush callers and they seem to be in less of a hurry to get them off the line.

[Rjnerd]

2. Clear trend there.

I will often read the comments over on the Yahoo news site. In general, those made by the left are reasoned text, the authors have heard of punctuation and lowercase. The comments by the right are usually personal attacks, in UPPER CASE, and the only punctuation mark they have heard of is the !!!!!! (Always repeated).

Living in Mass, I heard a lot of noise on the subject of Gay marriage. When someone argued for marriage, they could explain their reasoning. In general, they could answer the questions "How" and "why". The opponents could not do the same. Their standard argument was "It will destroy straight marriage", but they could/would not answer the "How will it destroy..."

Very simply, the mindset is simply bigotry. And sadly, most don't even realize that they are using such language. But if you read about the debate on mixed race marriage, you find the EXACT same words used.

Point this out, and the usual response is anger.

sigh...

Anyhow, congrats on getting the letter published, especially given the local political climate. Let us know what sort of response you get.