I think the anger and unthinking vile heaped on Bush is a direct result of America simply not knowing how to grieve about 9/11. I honestly believe that so many people were so frightened and traumatized by 9/11 that mentally/emotionally, they've reverted to an earlier time (9/10), and subconsciously blame Bush for attempting to make them deal with reality post 9/11.

Just my take on it. I have worked for a decade and a half with violent offenders. I think that the vast majority of Americans are good people who believe that other people are essentially good. They don't know how to cope when the tragedy of reality (some people are evil, murdering bastards) intrudes on their paradigms. So, they get angry at, for instance, the cops on the scene, inventing some imaginary thing that the cops did wrong that caused their loved one to become a victim. Never mind that the cops were far, far away when the crime occurred and arrived as fast as was humanly possible. They still serve as a visible scapegoat for the person's suffering.

Our nations' visible scapegoat, right now, for the left, is George W. Bush.

I would assert that, sincerely, a lot of Kerry supporters were not emotionally prepared for a loss. This had a devastating impact on them. Some people, doubtlessly, viewed Kerry's loss as a sort of referendum not only on their point of view, but on themselves as people. I think that it was unwise of them not to prepare for this possibility. As with the friend who wrote the letter disavowing Bush before he even gets out of the gate, I have a similar impulse. I'm not sure where it comes from.

Another excellent post. I've got to go to the store now, but PLEASE BE ABOLUTELY SURE TO READ Dean Esmay's excellent reply to John Perry Barlow.

Randy Barnett! Randy Barnett for Justice or Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, I say! He's one of my heroes. Timothy Sandefur and Jonathan Rowe, too, on the Supreme Court. And Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh. What a dream that would be. Actually, just about anybody on my blogroll would be fine, but these are the best legal minds.

Oh, and THANK YOU!!!! for the link!

This is what I wrote in Dean's World:

HAIL TO THE KING!!!!

I admire Dean
For marrying the Queen.

I admire the Queen
For marrying Dean.

Every once in a while Dean writes a magnum opus that sums up just about everything he has been writing for a long time, and that sums up why I read Dean's World all the time. This was terrific. Thank you, Dean.

Paul Burgess asked:
"Who will question the authority of those who question authority?"

I will. I have been doing so for a long, long time. I don't conform to the non-conformists. I deviate from the deviationists.

Interesting spectrumology. The football players vs. the chess club? Dean has always struck me as a chess champion, a brilliant intellect, the defender of the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.

That essay reminds me of an essay Tom Wolfe once wrote in a symposium in "Commentary" back in September, 1976, on the various meanings of "Left" and "Right". He said that "Left"-"Right" conflicts come down to replays of high school conflicts between "jocks" vs. "freaks". The football hero gets all the cheerleaders, but ends up pumping gas in the middle of Nebraska, yet still roots for the winning team (police, army, etc.). The "freak" gets bullied by the "jocks", but ends up selling his art for $100,000s in the most fashionable section of Manhattan or San Francisco, but still roots for "the underdog". Interesting idea.

Most interesting about all that, takes me back. Back in the good old days when I was in good old Central High School, Monmouth-Independence, Oregon, Class of 1973, "the Royal Orgy House" as some of us called it, we called the "jocks" the "soshes" (i.e., the "social" stars: athletes, cheerleaders, class presidents and other officers, prom queens) and the "freaks" we called the "hippies" (long hair, pot, protesting against Nixon and the Viet Nam War). There were also the lower-class "greasers", who liked cars and motorcycles, who tended to be the Right of the "soches".

A conservative club, the "Synthetics", put out their own newspaper, arguing that the official school paper (which dealt with little more ideological than the latest football game or the problem of gum-chewing in the halls -- though there was the famous letter to the editor "[James] Mole Says Hippies Wrong") was too far to the Left. One young Rightist intellectual wrote: "....to me, hippieism is the same as communism...." That has always stood out in my memory. The _style_ of that!

Anyway, I myself and my closest friend throughout high school, Charles William Harrington, stood apart from all of those groupings. We were loners. He and I both wrote stories and poetry. He had extremely short hair. He once drew a spectrum on the blackboard from collectivism on the Left to individualist anarchy on the Right.

In my last year of high school (and then after until his tragic death in an auto accident) I became acquainted with another independent-thinking young man, David Lynn Smith. He wore his hair extremely long like a hippie, but he thought very differently from any hippies. He liked the hard, sharp, dualistic, _styles_ and passion of Rightists like Ayn Rand and the Rev. Dr. Billy James Hargis. We watched the Watergate hearings and we loved to hate Nixon. He and I created a two-dimensional, four-quadrant spectrum, the "Smitty'n'Andy" spectrum, which I have been refining and expanding upon ever since, spinning out endless variations and tie-ins, and have added a third dimension. We talked about making a board game out of that spectrum.

The _styles_ of it all. Most interesting. Anyway, I totally agree with what Dean (the King) wrote about the vile hatefulness of people who want to throw other people in jail for smoking pot. I also feel that way, if you haven't noticed, about the people who want to throw other people in jail for having sex with other consenting adults. I'm against the government telling us what we can read or who we can marry. And, yes, I voted for Bush, I support the War Against The Terror Masters 100%, and I totally defend the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

If the Democrats want to win our votes, they're going to have to clear away the fog of their stereotypes about Republicans and Independents.

The comments to that essay by John Perry Barlow show very well, by way of negative example, why so many people did not vote for the preferred candidate of those commenters. These Leftists hate "the rich", and yet a commenter kept arguing that Kerry supporters travel more and therefore have higher IQs and are more enlightened and morally superior. Those who travel have more money! A blatant contradiction. Those asinine comments could have been written by Dean to prove his point!

Anyway.... HAIL TO THE KING!!!! AND HAIL TO THE QUEEN....!!!!
11.9.2004 3:40pm