Am I insane or is everything totally fucked?

I read this yesterday and it made me feel insane. Please read it. Seriously, I just don't want to be the only insane person. I want you to read it at my recommendation and comment here that now you feel insane too. It is long. If you print it out, it takes 24 pages. It probably takes about 45 minutes to read. You should really read it though. Please someone read it and help me feel better. This is the most pathetic request, I fully acknowledge.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19720


I have a few scattered thoughts now that I've given my brain 24 hours to recover.


[RWA Bush]

If you want insight directly into the mind of George W. Bush, read everything you can about Right Wing Authoritarianism. Read the "significant correlations" section. Pretty much the entire list jumps out at you as describing our President. Highlights from the RWA wikipedia that the opening link include:

• Uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs.
• Uncritically trust people who tell them what they want to hear.
• Use many double standards in their thinking and judgments.
• Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty such as the Bill of Rights.
• Be prejudiced against racial, ethnic, nationalistic, and linguistic minorities.
• Be bullies when they have power over others.
• Help cause and inflame intergroup conflict.
• Be highly self-righteous.
• Use religion to erase guilt over their acts and to maintain their self-righteousness.

I just don't understand why this research isn't more popular, because it explains so much about American politics. (There is an outstanding series by Sara Robinson called Tunnels and Bridges that first exposed me to the concept.)


[Incompetence in Charge]

I'm just dumbfounded by how incompetent Bush is on every level. It literally is like everything he touches turns to shit. And not only is he totally inept, he surrounded himself with more complete ineptitude. His entire administration is full to the brim with unqualified yes-men who are incapable of performing in their jobs. There are endless stories about how political loyalty interview questions were more important than insignificant details like education or experience. The shit in that article is just mind-blowing; not only are his key players morons, they're morons who hate each other and are constantly squabbling. How the hell did this happen??

This leads to my next thought.


[Most of this country doesn't really give a shit about politics, and this is what we've let happen]

Nobody really pays attention. A huge percentage of voters just vote with their feelings, not with any actual analysis of the issues. We're just too fat and addicted to television to engage in complex thought about these kinds of issues. A central theme of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (which deserves 5 blog entries worth of heaping praise based on the half of it that I've read so far) is that a large middle class buffers the controlling elites from rebellion by the repressed poor. I'm sure I'm grossly simplifying it, but America just doesn't give a fuck what our leaders do as long as we're well-fed and comfortable.

And like John Wilkins, I have to wonder what will ever come of this. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and all the other neocon bastards are never going to be held accountable for their misdeeds. Yes, Rumsfeld got fired, but I'm sure he can get any kind of high-paying consulting job he wants. But all of these guys are just going to get away with it.

It reminds me of how the recently late Gerald Ford decided to spit on the face of justice and pardon Richard Nixon. How does that make any sense at all? This quote from the link is how I feel about Bush and company:

"The tragedy is not that those who rose so high should fall so low. The tragedy is that those who had so low an appreciation for our government should have risen to such high positions in it."

How did anyone stand for Ford's pardon of Nixon? I just have to conclude that they were too fat and comfortable to care about justice. How can we stand for what Bush has done to our country?


[Poorly Educated Public]

Another reason we, the American public, let this all happen is because we're terribly undereducated. In most of the 5 tributes that I owe Howard Zinn, I'll be mentioning that it is a national disgrace that we don't learn Zinn's kind of history in our schools. I think most of the 7 people who read this far will already realize that the American public is terrible at math and doesn't understand the scientific method, and has terrible reasoning skills. But we are also ignorant of all but the most self-serving home-team pseudohistory that is peddled to us in middle school.

PZ Myers points out a list of disgusting shit our country has done (a link to the same site that hosts Sara Robinson's work that I mentioned earlier), and rightly laments that "we are a nation of monsters." We are monsters, but we think we're noble. If we learned real history, Zinn's history, we'd know what monsters we are, and maybe we'd be a little more humble and take a little more care than to elect a monster like Bush.

The more poorly educated we are, the more it fuels this anti-intellectual streak we have in us. We make fun of the smart kids in elementary school, then in high school, and then when they run for President (this is another long read that I'd strongly urge). Instead we elect a simple fella who seems like he'd be fun to hang out with, and had no clue what the difference was between a Sunni and a Shia. We want a high school class president for a national President, a guy we can party with on the weekends and who doesn't make us feel like the dumbasses we are by using big words and fancy-schmancy scientificizing.


[Denial of Reality]

Maybe this last one brings it all together, or maybe it should have come first. Or maybe I'm the one missing reality. I just feel insane because nobody acknowledges basic reality. Its like absolutely no facts of the natural world register with Bush, with America. Bush just doesn't realize that we can't "win" in Iraq. Bush, like the rest of America, just doesn't understand that we're incapable of simply accomplishing anything we want with the sheer force of our will.

I mean, I already knew this, having read The Republican War on Science and seen the way the public and politicians can just deny global warming or evolution despite mountains of indisputable evidence, but it is just infuriating to see that denial of reality costing thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives. And a million other ways it messes everything up.

All for what?

So, am I insane or is everything totally fucked?