Delusional Thinking

Meteor Blades at the Daily Kos made the following observation about Bush supporters in a blog post on June 30th,

The 26% didn't flinch about lying the nation into war, authorizing torture, wrecking the environment, wiretapping illegally, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, handing billions over to war profiteering cronies, dumping the Geneva Conventions, suppressing the vote, tainting good will toward America internationally, turning modest budget surpluses into monstrous deficits, trying to undermine Social Security, rewriting scientific studies and politicizing every single governmental agency.

It’s typical of many of us non-Bush people, in that Meteor Blades can’t figure out why anyone still supports the current administration. Listen up, I know you will balk at this, but I’m pretty sure it is true.

The 26% doesn’t believe he did those things.

There are wmd’s (we just haven’t found them yet) and Saddam Hussein did perpetrate 9/11, what we are doing is not torture, we are benefiting the oil/gas industry, the wiretaps are not illegal because we are only listening to terrorists, the dead Iraquis were all killed by other Iraquis, the companies profiting in Iraq saved our government a lot of money (and the administration had nothing to do with it), the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to terrorists, we only took the vote away from people who don’t deserve it, everybody in the world loves us, tax cuts stimulated the economy, Congress prevented the administration from fixing Social Security, and on those last two points, “What the hell are you talking about?”

When someone makes a claim which is based on facts or on evidence, you can then engage in discussion by presenting other facts or other evidence. But when someone makes a claim which is based purely on that person’s belief system then discussion is pretty much ruled out, because facts and evidence are not an issue.

True Bush Believers are Bush Believers because of a belief system, not because of facts or evidence. They will hold to that belief and simply do not care about facts or evidence. They will admit into their realm of knowledge only those facts and such evidence which support their belief system; all other facts and any contradictory knowledge is barred at the gate. So Bush Believers are not okay with him lying us into an unjust war.

They admire him for leading us into a holy war against the forces of evil.