Obligatory post-election comments
Not so much about the election results, but about some of the responses. I heard, Wednesday afternoon, a lady on NPR talking about why the various marriage proposals passed so overwhelmingly. “It’s because most people didn’t realize that these proposals also banned civil unions,” she said. “They would have voted differently if they’d understood that, but it wasn’t made clear to them.” Molly Ivins compares Bush supporters to a brainwashed cult. I’ve lost count of the number of angry posts I’ve seen about “ignorant sheeple choosing that @#$@#%**@%@” and “the worst national disaster ever”.
It seems that these people (and Bush supporters too, perhaps, at least to some extent) are true optimists. They believe, simply, that all rational, intelligent, well-informed, well-meaning people will see things a certain way. They believe that they themselves are all of those things, and therefore others should see things their way too.
Those who don’t, of course, are lacking in one of those characteristics. Perhaps they’re poorly informed (or misled by all Bush’s lies and Rove’s sinister web of intrigue). Perhaps they’re just not quite bright, or blinded by the chains of religious upbringing. The arch-Republicans themselves, of course, are either just barely intelligent enough to walk, or are malevolent geniuses plotting to bathe the world in babies’ blood and the furnaces of thermonuclear war. (Or perhaps “thermonuculer”.)
And then they claim that it’s the GOP — and especially those “right-wingers” — who see the world in black and white.
The real question, of course, is how people ever get out of high school with such a simplistic view of the world, and such poor background knowledge of history. (You want “a nation deeply divided”? Try 1855-1875 or so. Things haven’t gotten that bad now; God willing, they won’t ever again. “We need healing,” people say. Obviously Bush was the only one trying to divide and polarize the electorate this year; Kerry could’ve just waved a magic wand and made everything All Better Again.)
Then again, the teachers (well, at least the NEA and AFT) strongly endorsed the Democrats, as always, so perhaps the teachers’ unions aren’t convinced it’s in the country’s real best interest to turn out citizens well equipped to think for themselves and in reasonable terms. (Not that I’m suggesting any sort of conspiracy, of course. Do I look like Ann Coulter?)
