Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Head Trip
Atrios lauds today's column by William Saletan, in which he ridicules Bush's "unhinged" idea of "credibility". According to Saletan, the problem is that Bush sincerely believes that credibility means refusing to change one's mind, when even reality demonstrates that the "picture in his head" is wrong.
Atrios' props notwithstanding, the same could be said of Saletan. Saletan is, after all, the guy who recently lectured Democrats that "most voters don't [think Bush is a liar], for a good reason: It isn't true." The ludicrousness of this assertion gives new life to the old line about some things being so preposterous it takes an educated person to believe them.
To normal people, a lie is a statement knowingly at variance with reality. Occasional false statements do not automatically point to dishonesty, but a constant stream of false statements made in the teeth of evidence that demonstrates their falsity does. That has been abundantly on display since Inauguration Day 2001.
The picture in Saletan's head is that Bush's moral rigidity and self-righteousness prevents from seeing and adapting to reality. But that mental picture depends on his own selective picture of reality for its preservation, namely, that Bush never compromises his "principles" in the face of changing reality. As it happens, I'm listening to Franken on Air America right now, and they're having a field day listing just such Bush's broken promises. And this doesn't even get to his well-documented history of untruths about his own intentions, not least of which were those towards Iraq before 9/11. When Saletan calls Bush dangerously unhinged from reality, he's being unkind to the dangerously unhinged, who, after all, are not responsible for their mental state.
Is this how dysfunctional the national family has become under our dry drunk President, that his enablers in the intelligentsia, such as Saletan, bullied by relentless abuse of power and shameless prevarication, have so skewed public perception that delusional half truths are applauded simply because they are a break from 4 years of flat-out denial and sycophancy?
Atrios' props notwithstanding, the same could be said of Saletan. Saletan is, after all, the guy who recently lectured Democrats that "most voters don't [think Bush is a liar], for a good reason: It isn't true." The ludicrousness of this assertion gives new life to the old line about some things being so preposterous it takes an educated person to believe them.
To normal people, a lie is a statement knowingly at variance with reality. Occasional false statements do not automatically point to dishonesty, but a constant stream of false statements made in the teeth of evidence that demonstrates their falsity does. That has been abundantly on display since Inauguration Day 2001.
The picture in Saletan's head is that Bush's moral rigidity and self-righteousness prevents from seeing and adapting to reality. But that mental picture depends on his own selective picture of reality for its preservation, namely, that Bush never compromises his "principles" in the face of changing reality. As it happens, I'm listening to Franken on Air America right now, and they're having a field day listing just such Bush's broken promises. And this doesn't even get to his well-documented history of untruths about his own intentions, not least of which were those towards Iraq before 9/11. When Saletan calls Bush dangerously unhinged from reality, he's being unkind to the dangerously unhinged, who, after all, are not responsible for their mental state.
Is this how dysfunctional the national family has become under our dry drunk President, that his enablers in the intelligentsia, such as Saletan, bullied by relentless abuse of power and shameless prevarication, have so skewed public perception that delusional half truths are applauded simply because they are a break from 4 years of flat-out denial and sycophancy?
