I wonder what percentage of the people who voted for George Bush are simply fucking stupid.
The expression goes: "In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king". This is bullshit. In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man had better watch his God-damned step, because his sight could easily lead him to challenge accepted beliefs and he is really fucking outnumbered. It doesn't matter how well he can see a thousand fucking stones coming at him, no matter how poorly aimed.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
John Stuart Mill said it best: "I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it." Indeed. Stupid people generally lack imagination and are prone to irrational fear, both qualities which make one a conservative.
Now, it is obvious that not all Bush voters are stupid. For one thing, I doubt that an entire half of the nation's voters are morons, and, let's face it, there were stupid people voting for Kerry, too. (Many of them probably voted Nader in 2000.) On the other hand, 41% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the 9-11 hijackings. 41%. Believe a statement that no one in either party has claimed and is patently false. People like that can only be of three sorts, all classic neo-republican voters:
1) the Ignorant, who don't pay much attention to the outside world and tend to believe what the ubiquitous conservative corporate media and the right-wing spin machine feed them,
2) Ideologues, who are willfully obtuse, having picked a side and signed any critical thought over to their ideological masters, and
3) the truly Stupid.
Please note that these people are not the entirety of the Republican party. The Republican party has many other elements. For instance, it is currently entirely run by the Corrupt, who don't give a shit about anything (least of all the good of American citizens) except making themselves and their cronies lots of money. Everyone involved with the White House, and most Republican Congressmen, are not Stupid, simply (and wholly) Corrupt. I dare you to name one thing that the Administration and their Congressional lickspittles have done or tried to do that was actually for the good of the country. Okay, Afghanistan. Name two.
But by God Bush cut his holiday short to help that poor Terri Schiavo.
Anyway. There are also, inexplicably, still people in the Republican party who do want what's good for the country. Folks who want to shrink the size of the federal government, for instance. I may think these classical Conservatives are wrong, but they are clearly neither Stupid nor Evil. Hrm. Actually, whether or not these people are Stupid is increasingly up for debate, given that the current Administration is so blatantly Corrupt and uninterested in, say, shrinking the size of the goverment, yet they continue to "hold their nose and pull the lever for Bush." Stupid is as Stupid votes.
And of course there are so-called "moral" conservatives, who resemble very closely the Ideologues. Many of these people are Stupid - witness Terri Schiavo's 'fans', so eager to rush in and 'save' her - but not all of them. Many simply feel strongly about a single issue, an issue where the Republican promises seem better than the Democratic promises. Yet like the actual Conservatives in the above paragraph, these people's support of an individual who they think will put a halt to abortion but who gleefully executed more convicts than any other governor in Texan history and has gotten thousands killed in an entirely unnecessary war shows a strong ability to blind themselves to facts that might conflict with their programmed loyalties. "Culture of Life" my ass. You want a "Culture of Life", you go the whole mile, like the Vatican. I may disagree with them but by God their stance has moral integrity. These American "war good, abortion bad" zealots are despicable.
Where was I? Ah, yes. As you can see, untangling the truly Stupid from the other sorts of modern Republican voters is difficult. Obviously we can remove the Corrupt from the equation. Evil, yes, but anything but Stupid. Of course, the folks who are actually benefiting from this administration are a tiny, tiny percent. So putting them aside doesn't change the numbers very much.
But how many honest Conservatives are left in the party of Big Brother? A million? And how many people care most of all about titties on teevee, or teaching creationism in school, or life beginning at conception, and vote based on that and nothing else? Probably more, say ten million.
The official count was 60,693,281 votes cast for Bush in 2004. Take out a million and a half honest (but arguably Stupid) Conservatives, and ten million "morals" voters, we are left with a shade over forty-nine million Bush votes.
Out of the total votes cast (118,049,259), that's 41.6%.
Huh.
Guess it's worthwhile to go after that massive and crucial Stupid vote.
- Sun Ra