From a letter in the Daily News today, on the historians who voted George W. Bush the worst president in history: “Sounds to me like a bunch of secular progressive elitists trying to defame a good, decent, honest, God-fearing man … President Bush has brought a sense of morality and godliness back to the White House.”

And when was that, I wonder? When he signed off on his cabinet sanctioning and authorizing torture of American prisoners? When he kept telling America he was trying to avoid war, even though he’d already decided on regime change? When he kept telling America that we had to invade because Saddam had thrown out the UN weapons inspectors—even though this wasn’t true?

And by what logic is the son of a former president, Yale graduate, millionaire not an elitist himself?

Then the writer goes on to assert that Bush and McCain “will go down in history as the men who brought democracy, peace and stability to an otherwise Islamo-fascist, theocratic area of the world that was hellbent on killing anyone and everyone who didn’t cater to their deranged extremist beliefs.”

Ah, no. Until we invaded, Iraq was a largely secular nation. We brought the theocratic whackjobs to Iraq, which is why “democracy, peace and stability” are nowhere to be found in the Iraq Bush made.

Then there are the usual right-wing rants about how the enemy are fascists (they’re evil, but not fascist); everyone criticizing the war is doing so for a political agenda (in contrast to war supporters who presumably are noble souls totally removed from base politics) and it’s only because traitorous anti-war activists stabbed the troops in the back that we aren’t proclaiming victory now.

Reading letters like this are kind of unsettling. I believe in reason and negotiation to settle differences; it’s the only way to work things in a democracy where every point of view is entitled to be heard (even if we only hear it long enough to mock it). How do you reason with people who impose their own fantasy world over reality and refuse to admit error?

The writer says “This is what I firmly believe and you can’t change that.” And that’s the problem, we probably can’t.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 10:34 am and is filed under Politics, Terrorism, War/military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.