Or why we keep banging our heads against the wall.
The GOP has a monopoly on hero worship.
Through the use of imagery, pulpits and media since Reagan, they have succeeded in painting their leaders as demi-gods/ heros/ righteous & compassionate folks. A majestic landscape, sweeping music, red white and blue rippling in the wind, the Republican in a crisp, but casual shirt talking to ‘ordinary folk’, laughing with children, saying all the words that have been focus group tested to instill a sense of protection, comfort & ‘common sense’ with the masses.
And with George W. Bush they created a masterpiece. The boy-King, the president who talks to the Lord.
I’ve been watching the types of reactions by ‘average Americans’ to various scandals on tv, in LTE, comments & posts on blogs, talk radio, etc. and a common theme emerges.
They refuse to believe that it happened. End of story. No more argument. And the rationale, if ever given, is that this person (Usually a member of the Bush admin, one of the lunatic far-right, radical judges, Limbaugh/ O’Reilly or a Ralph Reed type) is a good man and would never have anything but the purest of intentions. Blind faith rears its ugly head.
This is brainwashing at its best. If there is no room for error, ever, than what type of person is capable of carrying that weight? This is where fundamentalist religion enters the picture.
We all went to school. Most of us to public school where we read the same books, worked from the same textbooks and learned about history. Unless something is fundamentally fucked in the Bible belt schools (other than just Evolution), everyone should be at about the same level of basic education. So where does the deification come from?
I know that American mythology has a lot to do with the thinking that sometimes allows intelligent, free thinking liberals to impart more hero worship to figures like Jefferson or Lincoln than perhaps they warrant… true leaders and thinkers for sure, but they were not without fault and as such were only human. This perhaps influences and enhances the religious influence that has most recently come to the forefront of American politics.
How can a person ignore their own education and common sense to allow blindly the creeping influence of the State on privacy rights, the decimation of the economy, and the reality of their own pocketbook? To continue to swallow the lines and the lies whole and spit them back at those who disagree.
It is to blindly & religiously believe that your party/ leader alone is benign and will not use the instruments of control against you and yours.
I trust no one implicitly. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Pretty much across the board. To believe otherwise you must believe the person you are trusting is uncorruptable & of the purest of hearts and the strongest of morals… but then that begs the question: How do you ever truly know the soul of another? The dark secrets they hide. The influences around them and how strong they are to resist? You can’t unless you believe the person is endowed with God-like qualities and therefore will always take the high road.
Or as they would have to believe:
God’s Ambassador on Earth, a Chosen one, a Good, pure Born-Again here to help bring on the Rapture.
The brain of the fundamentalists and all too many supposedly rational people has been propagandized to believe in the Cult of Personality that is the GOP.
Only way to keep the crazies at bay is to hammer the truth back at them each and every day. And to not give an inch. Bush is the President, he isn’t God or his messenger. This is America not Iran.