If you don’t know where someone is coming from it is easy to misread their intentions.
So it is with liberals and the Bush Administration. Many motivations are offered for the behavior of President George W. Bush — venality and stupidity are the big two. These motivations move from the Netroots into the general population.
Go through any American city today and you’ll see bumper stickers like "A village in Texas is missing its idiot" or some variation of "Bush is evil."
I don’t happen to accept either explanation. You don’t get to be President unless both you and the people around you have some intelligence. And no one in power, not even Saddam Hussein or Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin, ever claims evil intent, or goes "nyah-ha-ha!" in their hearts. Osama bin Laden thinks he’s a good guy, and so do his followers.
Instead, they use ideology to blind themselves. Baathism was an ideology of Arab nationalism, which Saddam Hussein believed he was following, and which excused what we all now know were terrible crimes. The same was true of Nazism. The same was true for Communism. The same is true with bin Laden. And the same is true for George W. Bush.
An ideology, unlike stupidity and unlike evil, can convince more than the leader of their absolute truth. It also brings in followers, people with great intelligence and high ideals who, nevertheless, will follow the leader right down the rabbit hole.
All the way down.
This is something I have tried to emphasize, quietly, in my talks here
about political philosophy. Each generation in American political
history has been dominated by a Thesis, by myths and values which guide
policy.
Another word for this is an ideology.
Even in junior high, American kids are taught to understand these
Theses, these ideologies. In every American history class in high
school you can ask the kids to define Jeffersonian Democracy,
Jacksonian Democracy, Lincoln’s Republicanism, Teddy Roosevelt’s
Progressivism or Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Liberalism, and get something
like a coherent answer, at least from the B students. Specific images
come to mind when you hear these names, ideas and concepts brought down
through history by the movements they created and led.
The same is true for the ideology of our time. I have called it the
Nixon Thesis. You can call it Nixonism, or Reaganism, or even Bushism
if you like. But it is an ideology. It is a coherent world view, as
I’ve said, a full Thesis with its own myths and values defining right
and wrong.
What some fail to see is that, after 40 years, this ideology has
permeated the culture so that, among many of its adherents, it’s
practically invisible. It’s what they define as reality.
Here is an example, from David Ignatius. Here is another, from David Broder.
Both men do what they have always done, confuse ideology and practical
politics. The ideology of the Nixon Generation defines their worldview.
They can’t conceive of any other frame. So, as the worldview collapses
around them, both men insist on seeing practical opportunities to
maintain that worldview. They are like Indians before Columbus — they
can’t see the ships in the distance because they have no conceptual
vocabulary with which to see them.
The idea that these men, or those in the Administration who follow
this President, or the President himself, must be evil, venal or stupid
seem obvious to those who share a different frame for what is going on.
Those whose myths and values have been shaped in reaction to the events
of this time can’t get inside the minds of those who are simply
following earlier ideological threads to their conclusion.
So we misread one another.
We should not do this. It leads to hatred, it leads to killing. Most important, it leads to ignorance, and leads us right into a new ideology, one with its own blind spots, and its own potential to do evil in what it’s convinced is the name of good. The state of war which has existed in America since
December 7, 1941 is a powerful ideological prism. It deserves respect,
even as we fight it, even as we seek to replace it.
But it won’t get it. And the opportunity to learn from it will be lost on the wings of politics.
As a wise man once said…so it goes.
Adherence to an ideology does not preclude stupidity. Indeed, blind adherence to an ideology tends to demonstrate stupidity. Intelligence would tend to agree with Hamlet that, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Anywya, the thing about Bush is that he says many things that can easily be demonstrated to be false. So, either he is stupid or he is so contemptuous of his citizens that he doesn’t bother to lie well. I think most people would prefer stupidity to contempt in their President.
Adherence to an ideology does not preclude stupidity. Indeed, blind adherence to an ideology tends to demonstrate stupidity. Intelligence would tend to agree with Hamlet that, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Anywya, the thing about Bush is that he says many things that can easily be demonstrated to be false. So, either he is stupid or he is so contemptuous of his citizens that he doesn’t bother to lie well. I think most people would prefer stupidity to contempt in their President.