Clueless People Love Bush

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted October 26, 2004.

Oh, you sweet, innocent, carefree citizens in non-swing states. You have no idea how much fun and slime you are missing.

In the swingers, wolves stalk us mercilessly (as the pro-wolf lobby points out indignantly, no one has ever been killed by wolves on U.S. soil, but try arguing that in the face of the relentless new TV ad campaign). Breaking news everywhere – 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq left unattended, stock market down to year's low, leading economic indicators down, more tragedy in Iraq, the Swift Boat Liars are back, more Halliburton scandal, George Tenet says the war in Iraq is "wrong" – it feels like you're dodging meteorites here in the Final Days.

Actually, the best evidence suggests we need to slow way down and go way back, because far from being able to take in anything new, it turns out many of our fellow citizens, especially Bush supporters, are stuck like bugs in amber in some early misperceptions that have never been cleared up.

It seems the majority of Bush supporters, according to recent polls, still believe Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and even to 9/11, and that the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Many of you are asking how that could possibly be, since everybody knows ...

But everybody doesn't know. There it is. And if you are wondering why everybody doesn't know, you can either blame it on the media, always a shrewd move, or take notice that the administration is STILL spreading this same misinformation.

Both Donald Rumsfeld and Bush have publicly acknowledged there is no evidence of any links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. However, as Dick Cheney campaigns, a standard part of his stump speech is the accusation that Saddam Hussein "had a relationship" with al Qaeda or "has long-established ties to al Qaeda." He makes this claim up to the present day. The 9/11 Commission, however, found that there was "no collaborative relationship" between the two.

Cheney, of course, also has never given up his touching faith that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, recently referring to a "nuclear" program that had in fact been abandoned shortly after the first Gulf War. Bush and Cheney misled the country into war using these two false premises, and it turns out an enormous number of our fellow citizens still believe both of them to be true. It's not because they're stupid, but because an administration they trust is still telling them both phony propositions are true.

Normally, when you get a situation like that – where people are simply not acknowledging reality – it is considered a cult, a form of groupthink based on irrational beliefs propagated by what is normally a charismatic leader. So those Kerry volunteers earnestly engaging Bush supporters on the latest outrage are way off base. They need to go all the way back to the Two Great Lies that got us into this: Many American soldiers marching into Iraq believed it was "payback for 9/11."

Molly Ivins is a best-selling author and columnist who writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.

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