Who Do You Trust?

The
Democrats have released a new video called "Fortunate
Son", set to the
Credence Clearwater Revival tune of the same name, and questioning (again)
Bush’s guard duty during the Vietnam war.

The video lasts about two minutes and is an easy download from the party
web site. It is being sold as "In the style of Fahrenheit 9/11, which
seems like dubious marketing to us.

But then we hated the movie, which struck us as an unimaginative 90-minute
political commercial.  Amazing anyone actually would pay money to
see that claptrap (the Dowbrigade downloaded it via Bit Torrent, for
academic
purposes only).

But it’s good the Democrats are pounding away at this point.  One
must remember that the American political dialog is not like having a conversation
with a sane, intelligent individual. Logic and evidence
are useless. It
is more like yelling at a drunk deaf man in a darkened room, and hoping
he can
hang
onto a
few repeated words, and remember them the next day when he sobers up.

The Blog-inspired imbroglio about the CBS documents purportedly showing
Bush was derelict in his duty are a perfect illustration of the standard
modern defensive tactic in the face of damning direct evidence; yell
fraud and forgery, counterattack, obfuscate, question documents, line up
experts and witnesses to counterbalance the oppositions experts and
witnesses, impugn the character and qualifications of the opposition’s
experts and witnesses, change the subject, look for red herrings and throw
a few into the mix if none are obvious.  The water around these
claims is now so muddied that no one can see a clear truth coming out of
it, and to a very real degree IT DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE what the truth
of the accusations is because that truth won’t be established, if at all,
until after the election, and meanwhile everyone is going to find authoritative
support for their own view, whatever it is, and keep in believing what
they believed before.

The election is coming down to trust, which strikes the Dowbrigade as
ironic, since we wouldn’t trust either of these guys to watch our computer
while we went to the bathroom at Starbucks.  Unless a story comes
out that brands George Bush as completely untrustworthy, he is bound to
win.  Most people don’t know nearly as much about Kerry, and aren’t
sure they can trust him yet.  They may not be ready to carve Bush’s
profile onto Mt. Rushmore, but after four years they trust him not to sell
us out to the socialist softies or let the barbarian hordes threaten our
profligate lifestyle.

On such gut feelings do the future of empires fly.