Marble Composition

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

I'm going to get all self-referential on you and remind you that I wrote this almost a year ago:

I'm often frustrated by how willfully ignorant the American public is of current affairs, especially of items that directly effect their safety and well being, but I also recognize that social currents work at their own pace. That may be another way of saying way too slowly for me, but hey, people have lots of things to worry about and deal with. What gives me hope is the enduring American tradition of being able to stroll by a pile of poopy, one of the things we deal with here at MC, and say, "wow, that really smells like crap".

(editors note: I hate those "I told you so" things, but, onward anyway.)

Apparently, the American public has gotten a really, nice whiff:


(You can go here to see the full image.)

You don't need to click on the enlarged image to see this:

• The massive first spike was after September, 11th, 2001.
• The second one came after Bush claimed: Mission Accomplished.
• The third one came after Saddam was plucked from his "rathole".
• The fourth short rise came after elections were held in Iraq.

As you can also see, he's headed for toilet country (they offer brush-cutting classes there I hear). The only way for him to get these numbers to rise is to attack another country, or to fail to prevent another attack on the U.S.

A couple of other points. The president's poll ratings are almost completely reflective of his stewardship of foreign policy. You may remember that, throughout his life, he never had much interest in foreign affairs in the first place. That now looks to be his presidential albatross. Let's flip our worldview around and imagine if Al Gore was appointed to the Presidency, and that 9/11 happened anyway. Can we rightfully portend that the foaming Right wing Noise Machine, led by mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, would not be calling for not only Gore's censure, but his impeachment and hanging on charges of treason? You're well told they would, but nobody's ever bothered to ask them. Instead, to them, and many others in our media, the worst attacks on the U.S. were George W. Bush's greatest moment. Look at it; it's right up there in the graph.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that, yes, we were all in shock after those attacks. The country was looking for guidance and leadership in those crazy moments, and a nationalistic sentiment seemed soothing to all.

As for me, Bush's bullhorn-standing-on-the-rubble moment, and his "go out and shop" advice had the stench of fraud all over it. I guess everyone's on the same page now.

The Good Professor Alterman points us to these comments by one of our nation's most revered political writer, Arthur Schlesinger:

Sometimes, when I am particularly depressed, I ascribe our behavior to stupidity—the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture. Thirty years ago we suffered military defeat—fighting an unwinnable war against a country about which we knew nothing and in which we had no vital interests at stake. Vietnam was bad enough, but to repeat the same experiment thirty years later in Iraq is a strong argument for a case of national stupidity.

History, even short history, is nothing more than a widening lens. I guess we all get the full picture in time, sadly when it's often too late.

posted by FuzzFinger @ 4/11/2006 06:43:00 PM