Author Archives: ghw

what bush supporters believe

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The often vituperative rhetoric of public American discourse is counterproductive. It is unfair, however, to place the blame on only one party. I keep coming across references on blogs to the Democratic Party as out of touch with the mainstream, as elitist and condescending. Many of these references sound like (and are sometimes paired with) descriptions of academics like myself. And yet, when faced with millions of people who believe in a reality for which there is no evidence, what should the proper response be?

In recent months the American public has been presented reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the heads of the Iraq survey group David Kay and Charles Duelfer (chosen by the president), concluding that before the war Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction nor even a significant program for developing them. Nonetheless, 72% of Bush supporters continued to hold to the view that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Only 26% of Kerry supporters hold such beliefs.

Despite the report of the 9/11 Commission saying there is no evidence Iraq was providing significant support to al Qaeda, 75% of Bush supporters believe Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda (30% of Kerry supporters), with 20% believing that Iraq was directly involved in 9/11. 1 Sixty-three percent of Bush supporters even believe that clear evidence of this support has been found, while 85% of Kerry supporters believe the opposite.

[Quotes taken from “The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters” (PDF), the report on a recent poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks.]

The goal for all of us should be communication and understanding.

Do Bush supporters believe these things because they are unaware of the facts? If so, then the proper response by those of us who opposed four more years of Bush should be to work on getting those facts out there. Or do Bush supporters instead believe those things because they want to believe them, regardless of what new information might come their way? Is this a result of cognitive dissonance, as L suggests? If so, then it doesn’t matter how hard we work to get the facts out there. What then?

if i exorcise my devils

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And I admit that I ain’t no angel
I admit that I ain’t no saint
I’m selfish and I’m cruel but you’re blind
If I exorcise my devils
Well my angels may leave too
When they leave they’re so hard to find
—Tom Waits

america: the prequel

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“The Day the Enlightenment Went Out,” by Gary Wills (NY Times):

This [election] might be called Bryan’s revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan’s fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions – on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage.

“The Values-Vote Myth,” by David Brooks (NY Times):

The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That’s policy, not fundamentalism. The upsurge in voters was an upsurge of people with conservative policy views, whether they are religious or not.

An interesting discussion is taking place on C18-L. Note that the second thread below leads to a blog: Timothy Burke’s Easily Distracted. Check out these threads:

rebooting palimpsest

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All previous Palimpsest posts have been imported right here.

I’m working on getting this site going again. Maybe it will be back up on the CHLT server, and maybe it will be somewhere else. I’m doing a test run of TypePad.

The downside of TypePad is this: in order to have multiple authors, you need to get the “pro” account, which costs $14.95 a month. If I could get 11 participants to each pay $14.95 along with me, then we’d have a year of edu-blogging ready to go. What do you say? Alternately, do any of you know of other hosting solutions that would be cheaper?

Regardless of where Palimpsest ends up, I hereby solicity additional participants. It does not matter how experienced a teacher you are. It does not matter if this is your first semester teaching as a grad student, or your 30th semester teaching as a full professor. Let me know if you’re interested.

better angels

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From Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, Monday, March 4, 1861:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.