Reply #33: "We've got trouble in River City." This is a line from "The Music Man,"

[Peace Patriot]

and the meaning of "River City" in that musical is "mainstream America."

Bush and his "pod people" (those who mindlessly repeat Bushite "talking points") do not represent the majority of Americans. The majority of Americans--as time and again expressed in opinion polls, and as demonstrated in the true vote count in 2004--are very anti-Bush. They still oppose the Iraq war (nearly 60%). They oppose torture UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES (63%). They oppose every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, in very big numbers.

These are tolerant, fair-minded, generous, common sense people--the majority of Americans. They do not exist in some mythical "Main Street" America, or in some Norman Rockwell painting. ("River City.") They live mostly in dense urban areas, in a great cultural and racial and religious mix, and use computers and fly in airplanes and engage in scientific research and read books (in great numbers) and love sports (and fair play!), and own businesses, and seek college educations, and work at three jobs to hold their families together, and fight fires and collect garbage, and run Little Leagues and administer local agencies, and hold society together in a thousand different ways, and want a decent, representative government that benefits everyone and treats people fairly.

Bush's "pod people"--including extremist "Christians", his yes-men in Congress, his lapdogs in the news monopolies, and people like the woman described in this post who believe that Democrats steal elections even though we're losing--get way, way, way too much attention. Their views are trumpeted way out of proportion to their numbers.

And we, too, are influenced by that trumpeting (we are not immune, even those of us who have unplugged the TV)--we overreact to their views, and are sometimes gripped with fear that the whole country has gone nuts and is no longer capable of rational thought.

It is not so. The majority are disenfranchised and disempowered--and very puzzled, I think--but they are not fooled (they voted the Bush Cartel out!); they are not inclined toward extremism of any kind--religious or political--and they don't like it; and many of them strongly suspect that Bush stole the election.

What I'm saying is: Don't equate people who speak irrational Bush-Republican "talking points" with "River City" (mainstream America). They are NOT mainstream.