The Carpetbagger Report » Blog Archive » A flood of political fallout? Don't count on it

The Carpetbagger Report » Blog Archive » A flood of political fallout? Don't count on it: "In a country where people were smart and rational and fundamentally decent, yes, that's exactly what would happen. Unfortunately, the United States is none of those things right now."



What's "that"? What would happen? Bush would be out on his ass, of course. Will that happen, literally or figuratively? No.



Carpetbagger (Morbo) goes on:



"It amazes me that after five years plus of the Bush Gang, some journalists still "misunderestimate" him. This is a man who never admits a mistake, a man surrounded by the most craven partisan political operatives imaginable, a man who completely and utterly lacks any shred of a conscience, a man who cares about one thing and one thing only: the acquisition and maintenance of power for the most extreme elements of his party. They will say and do anything to hold on to that power, and if it means lying through their teeth, shifting the blame to innocent people and engineering phony good news, so be it.



"Bush went to New Orleans and said inane and offensive things. On the way down, he said he was looking forward to the visit, then realized that was a dumb thing to say and said he wasn't. Once on the ground, he reminisced about partying there. He made a few cursory visits with victims in one of the nicer shelters, then told everyone he was leaving but that he would not forget them. It was without a doubt the lamest performance by a president during a natural disaster ever and illustrated the depths to which this man is hopelessly out of his element.



"Not much to work with there, right? But Bush doesn't have to burnish his reputation on his own. If he did, we would have been shed of him a long time ago. What saves him is that he has the most cynical team of political jackals the world has ever known at his side. They are no match for progressives, many of whom foolishly continue to believe in the inherent decency of humankind.



"That Bush team knows it has a powerful ally on its side: the natural cluelessness of much the nation. They know that if you repeat something enough, with sufficient force, many Americans will start to believe it — no matter how outlandish or disconnected from the truth it is.



"Don't believe me? Then ask yourself this: What percentage of the American public still believes Saddam Hussein was tied to Sept. 11, 2001?



"Even now, as corpses are dragged out of wretched waters of New Orleans, as the sick and elderly die and newly minted orphans cry themselves to sleep at night in squalid shelters, even as desperate people wander the streets looking for missing loved ones or pack themselves into tents in strange cities, Team Bush has its priorities straight — not helping the victims, of course, but finding ways to pin the blame for their total and abject failure on someone else.



"Watch them work their magic in the days and weeks to come. Watch them and be disgusted. But above all, be ashamed. Be very ashamed. "



That's the hard truth. 40% of Americans despised Bush before Katrina, and despise him even more intently after the storm.



30% of the American People thinks Bush is a god and support him absolutely and are willing to believe anything good about him, however disconsonant with reality. A small fraction of those people are grossly rich, and actually benefit personally from Bush policies, and another important fraction serve the rich, and benefit personally, as well -- they have careers in journalism or politics, which their own mediocrity would otherwise never earn them. A whole bunch of that 30% are ignorant and stupid.



That leaves the 30% in the middle -- the uninformed, uninvolved middle, upon whom the corporate right-wing media and the Bush propaganda machine work their magic. These are the people, for whom a political argument is not an exercise in logic, but rather in hypnosis; they are not drawn into the endless dispute, rather they are drawn into a trance, by our endless political displays. And, in that trance they come to believe whatever "suggestions" are repeated endlessly and with the right degree of confident sonorousness.