Bush?s reelection kind of reminded me why I am a cynic, well..using the modern definition of the word, someone who believes that people actions are motivated by self interest. Of course, in the case of Bush as president, is only the perception of these people that it is in their best interest to have him as president. How many outside the oil industry can say that they are better off today than they were four years ago? The bottom line is that if you were voting to re-elect a president you would be naive to think that the second four years are going to be any better than the first four. So the question goes back why did all this people who are not likely to be better off today than four years ago vote for more of the same. The short answer is they are stupid. The long answer is pretty much the same, they are stupid. Thinking about this it reminded me of an old quote I heard long ago:
?No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.? and a corollary ?Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.? H. L. Mencken
I looked it up and thought, wow! Although simplistic, it pretty much expresses a reality. It doesn?t explain it but states it as an eternal truth. I looked up other stuff by H.L. Mencken and I found a lot of what he said both interesting and fun. Here are few:
?Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.? Given that Evangelical Christians were a big part of Bush?s success makes this very poignant
?I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.? Did anyone say Iraq?
?It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.? They have difficulty believing in evolution too
?Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.?
[This one is just a funny observation]
?Most people want security in this world, not liberty.?
The second most likely reason why people voted for Bush
?The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.?
Hmm, did anyone say WMD?s, this one is too easy, but I guess the concept is well explored and understood: it was a key part of Orwel?s 1984, and for that matter of that movie ?Wag the Dog?.
Anyways he was very outspoken in an era in which evangelicals ruled...hold-on that is just like now. In 1931, the legislature of the state of Arkansas passed a motion to pray for Mencken's soul. He died in 1956.
Posted by david at November 5, 2004 10:52 PM