Which is easier for Americans to swallow?

[BurtWorm]

Which is likeliest to make them take the Spanish solution, to get out en masse in November and purge the Bushists from power?

Belief 1: Bush is an idiot and his administration is incompetent. He dropped the ball on terrorism before 9-11 because he and they were just too stupid and incompetent to see it. He and his neocons are suckers who could not see that their worldview was based on false assumptions, and that is why 650 Americans and 10,000+ Iraqis have died in the year they said they were going to make the world safe for free markets and democracy in the Middle East.

Belief 2: Bush is an agent of evil--defined as deviousness, murderousness, promotion of a special interest at the expense of the common interest. Bush "dropped the ball" on terrorism because he had a different agenda, which was to enrich his "base" of corporate donors following a very specific plan: cut taxes, build up the military through expensive missile defense systems, make it easier for Big Energy to plunder the Middle East's and Central Asia's resources--in a nutshell commit the US to a prepackaged Project for a New American Century (PNAC). On this view, 9-11 was a ticket for the Bushists to ride.

So the choice again: Idiot or Evil? Which belief are Americans most likely to be able to digest? (NB: This may or may not be identical to which is most likely to be true.) The reason I ask is to see how DUers feel about the ability of the American people to take a rational decision, which is to eliminate either an idiot or an agent of evil from political power. If Bush is evil (which I believe he is, if evil is defined as I did above), then I wonder if Americans can grasp this. If not, can they grasp that he's an idiot, at least. And if they grasp that, then can they be relied upon to deprive him of power?

[murielm99]

1. I think it is a combination of the two.

But people won't care. They will vote their pocketbooks. Or, they will vote against him if the war gets much worse.

He is evil and stupid. He is evil and stupid. He is evil and stupid. I don't think many will grasp it, no matter how many times you say it.

[The Traveler]

3. I agree ... but

He is morally depraved and clearly not the sharpest tool in the box. However, many people are resisting that ... clinging to the belief he is a "good Christrian" (he is neither insofar as I can determine based on his actions and policies). If they must accept he is simply immoral on a grand scale, then they have considerable pride to swallow..

Humble pie tastes like shit but it sure is nutritious. However, few of us dig in willingly.

If one's goal is the removal of the Bush regime, then it would be better to go for the "he is incompetent" portrayal. These guys are well intentioned idiots. Get rid of them.

But if one's goal is the destruction of the neo-conservative movement, then one needs to press for the revelation and consider defeating Bush in November a secondary objective. In my view, the chief risk of that is that there may be no democracy here to save if he has another four years.

I therefore suggest we stick with the "he's an idiot" approach and continue to look for incontrovertible evidence of his evil. The way things are going down in Iraq, we may have some soon ... to the shame of us all.

[BurtWorm]

7. Excellent answer!

I'm not sure it's the right one, but you clearly get what I'm getting at here. :toast:

[uncle ray]

14. exactly, but...

if we use the incompetance thing to just get him out of office, they WILL come back to power! they need to be exposed for the evil that goes along with their incompetance so they never have a chance of gaining power once they are rid of, my second greatest fear is that kerry wins, then jeb or someone else comes back in 08, just a slight ripple in their plans.

[coloradodem2005]

15. I would agree.

There is a lot going on.

[Insider]

2. belief 2 plus

this admin did not drop any ball. they played offense, and scored big time.

i am baffled how people keep claiming how they are incompetent idiots. in fact, they all still hold the jobs they stole in 2000. they are all richer than they were then. their benefactors are all better off. pnac lives.

that seems like competence and success in my book. this is not rocket science here.

[The Traveler]

4. Short term success

often is not sustained over the long run. Bush has made several strategic blunders which have cost us much, produced little gain and are proving near impossible for him to remedy. Eventually, this will be difficult to overlook.

[BurtWorm]

6. The question is which is easier for most people to swallow.

Not which is closest to true, or even which is closest to what you personally believe. I admit it's a perverse question. What I'm trying to understand myself is which meme, if you will, is most likely to undo the Bushists. In Spain, the people very quickly grasped that they were being lied to and they weren't going to reward a government that lied to them by voting back in its party. Americans tend to be saps and suckers, unfortunately. Or I should say there's a greater proportion of suckers in the American electorate than in those of most major industrial democracies. ;) A greater proportion of saps too, of people who trust the government more than they should.

So what would make these saps and suckers get sick of being sapped and suckered? That's my question.

[Insider]

9. gotcha, bw

i'm off on one serious tangent tonight. btw, do spaniards vote by computer?

bush represents a vast population in this country. the core will NOT turn on him. and even if they did, his buds control the vote count. and even if they didn't, his buds sit on the supreme court still. done deal.
oh, the question? easy: belief #1, he is an idiot. ;-)

[BurtWorm]

10. Why is #2 such a hard sell?

Maybe that's my REAL question. ;)

[rebel_liberal]

16. His Idiocy Is Obvious

It will take a little more time for the masses to see the full scope of this regimes wickedness. Faux news controlled drone worker bees that most of us in the USA are tend to not want to consider this possibility.

[RoyGBiv]

19. Evil as a Hard Sell

Note that when I write of "we" I am in all cases using it in its generic sense.

The short answer is that it's a matter of willful ignorance, which is the toughest kind of ignorance to cure. Americans in general don't want to believe any of their leaders are truly evil. If a leader of this country were truly bent on world domination in the mold of a Stalin or a Hitler, it would shake the basic foundation of cultural lessons that have enveloped our minds since before we were old enough think complex thoughts. America is good. America is great. We would never allow someone to come into power who would do what "they" did.

And when Americans are forced to face this kind of possibility, they tend to explain it away as the work of some faction of which they are not and could never be a part. Sociologists would call this creating an Other. When forced to conceptualize the reality that our nation was established at a time when roughly 1/5 of its population was enslaved, this is explained away along regional or individual lines. It wasn't American; it was the South. It wasn't the South (my gggg-grandfather never owned any slaves) it was just the Southern aristocracy. And on and on. Americans deflect. If our leader is evil, it just may mean that a good portion of us are evil or support evil as well, and that might mean me. And I'm not evil.

The study of German society after WWII illustrates this point clearly and well. And if they had not been forced, in essence at gunpoint, to face the depth of the evil that was their leader, they may never have at all.

Americans can deal with corruption and incompetence. We can see a little of that in us or someone we know, and while we may not like it, this doesn't strike at our core beliefs as Americans.

This, believe it or not, is the very short answer. There's large tangent to be taken on the relationship of Protestantism, especially the ultra-conservative fundamentalist variety, and the notion of evil.

[Dover]

5. Considering that Americans swallowed the pretzel story

I'm guessing that it wasn't much of a stretch for them to believe the guy is an incompetant idiot who can't even eat without injury.

On edit: Of course anyone who could buy a story like that may also have a little trouble feeding themselves!

[Lindsey]

8. Voting their pocketbooks?

No one is doing well except the very richest people in the country. The fact is that Bush is winning over those he's winning over due to his social issues - anti-abortion, christianity, anti-gay, etc.

[sandnsea]

11. Belief 1

They will never in a million years believe a President of the United States could be intentionally evil. No way. Incompetent is even tough, but will come alot easier than evil.

[Jane Austin]

13. Partly because no one will believe that they themselves

voted for someone evil.

[leftofthedial]

12. Idiot is the only one

many people, even its supporters, believe the bushthing to be an idiot.

It will be easier to convince people that this stupidity is a dangerous thing.

No one outside the activist left believes the bushthing is evil. It certainly is, but Joe and Jane Sixpack don't believe it.

[Jose Diablo]

17. Cognitive dissonance

I myself go for door #2-*Bush did it for the money.

But I don't think John/Jane Q. Public will go for door #2.

For somebody to go for door #2 requires abandoning an 'ideal' view of what we as America have become. Few people will go through the pain of this self-realization. They will prefer to think *Bush is an idiot.

[Piperay]

18. Idiot...

people will believe that before they will believe chimp is evil. People just don't want believe that such evil exists, let alone that it has been 'guiding' this country for almost 4 years.

[0rganism]

20. It would be a lot easier to demonstrate #2 if the GOP weren't dominant

Proving #2 at this time is damn near impossible. Fortunately, #1 is hard to deny -- hell, it's their cover story, they've been pushing it as a close second to the official propaganda.

Turn over the executive and at least one house of congress, and we'd at least get to have some hearings that could lead to an official discovery of #2. Meanwhile, use #1 to gain the necessary leverage. If President Kerry doesn't fuck up horribly, he should have 8 years to expose the high crimes of his predecessor.

[BurtWorm]

21. How about instead of "evil" arguing that Bush is "corrupt."

This gets rid of the supernatural element and puts the problem in real terms. Can Americans come to grips with the fact that Bush and the Bushists are corrupt as they came to realize that Nixon et al. were corrupt? I think this may be possible.