My Uncle (Jeff) is part of the 25% of Americans who still supports George W. Bush, and I finally understand why. He is unquestionably an intelligent person, holding a PhD in accounting and working as an accounting professor at a well respected state University. When it comes to trivia, he knows almost every answer. We once played Trivial Pursuit and he won the game before anyone else got more than two pieces of pie. Another time while we were watching Jeopardy, he got almost every single answer correct including a sweep of the opera category in Double Jeopardy. It’s difficult to question his brain power.
So how does my uncle still support George W. Bush after all that has happened during the past six or seven years? Well, I learned the answer this past weekend when I visited him at his home. When I got in the door, I immediately noticed that Fox News was on his television. Apparently, that is the only "news" he ever watches on TV, abandoning the others due to their supposed liberal bias. He told me that the liberal media was out to get Bush and that Fox News is the only channel that treats Bush fairly. My uncle’s favorite program on Fox is (you guessed it) The O’Reilly Factor.
After a couple of hours of listening to my uncle spout off about liberal media bias and his love for Dubya, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, I couldn’t contain myself anymore. So I asked him some pointed questions:
HairyTrueMan: Do you think Bush could have prevented the 911 attacks?
Uncle Jeff: It was Bill Clinton’s fault for not paying enough attention to the threat from terrorism.
So I followed up with:
HairyTrueMan: Wasn’t Bush on vacation for the entire month of August 2001 and didn’t he get a PDB titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." during the same month? What action did he take to prevent the attacks?
Uncle Jeff: I’m sure he did everything he could. Clinton did a lot of damage to our national security during his eight years in office. And anyway, he wasn’t on vacation per se. He was still working from his home in Crawford.
He went with the "It’s Clinton’s Fault" answer again, so I decided to change the topic to Iraq, asking very simple questions.
HairyTrueMan: Where are Saddam’s WMDs?
Uncle Jeff: Probably in Syria.
HairyTrueMan: Why did we invade?
Uncle Jeff: 911
HairyTrueMan: Why are we still there?
Uncle Jeff: We are there to fight Al Qaeda.
HairyTrueMan: What about the Sunni and Shiite militias? Aren’t they killing more American troops than Al Qaeda is?
Uncle Jeff: The liberal media is overstating the ethnic violence and understating the threat from Al Qaeda.
Okay, so at that point I had only one question left to ask him.
HairyTrueMan: How do you know that the so-called liberal media is misleading people on Iraq if you don’t pay any attention to the liberal media?
Uncle Jeff: ...
HairyTrueMan: I mean, if you’re getting all of your information from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, how do you know that THEY are not misleading YOU?
Uncle Jeff: ...
I love talking with Republicans about George W. Bush because winning an argument these days is like shooting fish in a barrel. First they blame Clinton. Then they blame terrorism. Then they blame the fictional liberal media. It only takes a few simple questions to get them squirming. In fact, when discussing Bush with my Uncle, I never once gave him my political opinion. I stuck to simple questions and easily provable facts, and my uncle turned to stone, unwilling to discuss politics with me anymore.
But I did get an answer to my question about why he (and 25% of Americans) still supports George W. Bush. He does not watch, listen to, or read anything that contradicts his preconceived notion of the facts. My uncle and the other dead-enders are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts. And the source of information that many of these people exclusively use openly admits that they distort and falsify the news.
In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.
So is my uncle responsible for his lack of understanding, or is he simply a victim of Fox News misinformation? Because he is intelligent, a relative, and my mother’s brother, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. We need to do what we can to help the 25% of the population that cannot see the evil of George Bush. A good start would be to change the laws to make it illegal for a purported news outlet to deliberately distort and falsify the news. We need to go after Fox News and the other distorters and liars who have enabled Bush and his Republican co-conspirators to take over this country.