I love Gene Weingarten's articles. This one made me laugh, but, yo, it's a bad idea to mock at least some of those 17 percent who support the chimperor. Why bother with treating a portion of the deluded 17 percent with kindness and respect, you ask?
Answer: because a lot of those people are frightened out of their minds right now as the evidence of his imcompetence mounts, and mocking fear is just . . . Mean. School bully mean.
I can see why some people I like and even admire are determined to support Bush. To go from believing he's presidential, to understanding he's a force of destruction is very scary. It destroys too much. All those deaths that were noble sacrifices in the war on terror become nothing more than blood wasted for stupidity and greed.
Destruction of any core belief is a huge event for anyone. Shattering a basic value like thinking the president is good at his job [why is he above criticism for them? maybe by virtue of being elected? Who knows?] takes down more than a single fact, it affects everything that reality touched. For someone used to thinking in black and white, it could possibly turn a basic belief in our whole system of government into a belief that the system is so flawed, it is useless.
It destroys more than some people can bear. It's a gigantic shift and if I could avoid an internal change that huge, I bet I would.
When I comfort my kids about the reality of Death Deceit and Destruction, I try to offer some light. Instead of kicking those scared Fellow Americans, we should be gently helping them confront the truth.
Damned if I can think of any upbeat to offer those scared Bush supporters to help them accept the truth(except ummm maybe some of you are not as stupid as some of us think you are?)