In a secret place at the back of my mind, I've been trying for months to form some conception of the personal loyalty so many voters feel toward Bush .. the kind of loyalty that seems to transcend reason or self-interest, so mystifying that I've seen the question approached more than once in the threads. We're all looking for ways to expose the Bush travesty however and whenever possible, both on the level of personal communication and on the wider stage -- and many of us sense something deeply twisted in this fawning devotion. Step by step, I think I'm starting to figure it out.
Mass manipulation through media is a science of long standing, having reached fruition in the disabling of many folks' abilities to think clearly for themselves at all .. or, for that matter, to hold any sense of self-image that hasn't been fed to them by television. In other words, a void has been created in our personal lives by media, in order that media may fill it.
So here's the thing about Bush, and likely his greatest advantage, the reason for such widespread emotional fealty : he's a projection. Not in terms of an image that has no existence without a blank wall (though that's in there, too) .. but a tabula rasa (the blank wall itself) onto which self-image is projected and so becomes real. Without the Bush projection, those who look to him for that reflections of themselves aren't 'real'. He gives people their self-image by remaining empty, appealing to the base emotions and instincts to insure attraction .. much in the way the media uses sex to attract to a product. (Ever wonder how anyone -- man or woman -- could think Bush 'sexy'? It's a confusion of basic emotion.)
And so for as long as Bush remains a projection, inseperable from self-image, it will be impossible to counter devotion to Bush strictly in terms of, say, economic self-interest: 'There's no possible way that I (Bush) am working against my own economic interest. That's just impossible.'
The task may very well be to force a disconnection between Bush the Projection and Bush the Actuality.
I think it's about asking folks to consider how much Bush actually has in common with them; a matter of forcing them to look very clearly at the realities of their own lives and make the contrast. The first part of this is the most daunting, as the more unpleasant one's own situation, the more desperately one seeks out alternate realities to live in (such as Bush's). However, truths like this tend to grow pronounced when times are hard and true escape remote.
