Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog

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Tuesday, July 13, 2004
23:50 - See, see, what it is, is this is what it is, see	(top)
Somewhere along the line, something happened that changed how people everywhere view the President. I don't know what exactly it was, or whether it's this President in particular that this applies to; but what happened is that the burden of proof shifted from those who wanted to posit that Bush was evil to those who wanted to posit that he wasn't. In earlier times, we generally assumed the President had flaws, but that someone who wanted to discredit him would have to point them out and prove them. Otherwise we gave the President the benefit of the doubt, out of respect for the office and an understanding of the need for unity�discussing the issues of the day rather than the vagaries of the President himself. But sometime, somehow, it became the accepted understanding that Bush was a bad person; and suddenly, it was no longer necessary to cite reasons for believing so. Particularly in the personal circles in which I travel, it's become such that finding someone who isn't anti-Bush is about like stumbling across a Platygaeist. He's the subject of honest bewilderment ("...You're joking, right?"), then scorn and ire. in these circles, the accepted wisdom is that Bush is a fanatical religious zealot, even though he's no more overtly religious in his speeches and conduct than, say, Clinton, or indeed any other President in our history. Although it's an article of faith that "politicians lie", in Bush's case even a "lie" that turns out to be true is cause for crucifixion. Though throughout the 90s it was obvious throughout pop culture, movies, and comedy routines that Saddam was an evil monster whom we should remove as quickly and expediently as possible, in the post-9/11 world for Bush to follow up on everybody's heartfelt exhortations�from Gore to Kerry to Edwards�by invading Iraq makes him into Hitler. What moved the goalposts this far? What has caused this drastic a change in how we judge our leaders? How do we even cope with this kind of cognitive dissonance? Because that's what it is. I honestly just don't get it�I can't see how one can arrive at the mindset that the President is presumed evil and must be proved benign. I mean, I can laugh at Clinton jokes as hard as anybody; but I fully and unhesitatingly recognize the good things about him. He was an astonishingly good "uniter"; he created an atmosphere in which we could enjoy the prosperity of the 90s without being worried that we were taking ourselves too seriously. He did rather disgrace the office, but realistically, he was only following in a grand tradition of Presidential lasciviousness that went back generations. I can respect Clinton even as I disagree today with a lot of what he stood for. And should Kerry win, I'd give him the same respect due his office even as I stood in opposition to many of his policies. I've never equated Clinton with Stalin, and unless he grows horns and a tail, I don't ever intend to call Kerry Satan. So what is it about Bush that has driven so many people, frankly, around the bend? I don't know, but I can guess�without too much glibness�that it was just 9/11. How? In the sense, I suppose, that we've reached a point in our national discourse where we've become so obsessed with the cult of the "other"�the en-vogue oppressed minority, the fetishized untainted aboriginal tribe, the patriarchal European social and political paragon, the non-Christian religious zeal�that when something as horrific as 9/11 occurs, we're allergically reluctant to blame it on anybody or anything but ourselves, especially when it appears to originate from the basic tenets of a romantically un-Western culture. We have a desperate need, instead of blaming someone else and risking being called "racist", to find an internal scapegoat for something that shakes our psyches thus to the core. And what better candidate for that role than a President who's already seen as somewhat illegitimate, and who already has a reputation as being a bit of a verbal bumbler, and (for special bonus credit) comes from the party that is seen as being opposed to the party that gave us the carefree prosperity of the 90s? Voil�: the perfect recipe for a domestically generated "problem" designed to take our minds off the bigger, externally imposed problem that we all know is out there, lurking. We want our problems to be close to home, so we can feel like we have a chance of solving them. We'll even alter reality if that's what it takes. ...Then again, though, it might have just been the fallout and bitter backlash from Monica Lewinsky.