Sunday, November 7, 2010

It's the end of their world

Check your post-Election analysis, and you get a bunch of "why are the voters so stupid" pieces.
A bad one comes from Franky Schaefer, and Mayor Bloomberg pushes stupid further in an interview.
“If you look at the U.S., you look at who we’re electing to Congress, to the Senate—they can’t read,” he said. “I’ll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We’re about to start a trade war with China if we’re not careful here, only because nobody knows where China is. Nobody knows what China is.”

Saying, "I'm so smart and you're so dumb" doesn't work well when you'd like to persuade people to your point of view. Unless you just want to berate them into giving up their view.
The Other McCain pointed me toward the Schaefer piece. I remember him and his father's books well from my college time in the 1980s. He's now reduced to saying "I've learned from my days in the Religious right. Read my book to find out how."
He has met some people who went too far thinking "the end is near" and projects that line to millions of people across the nation. The election results are a mistake made by people who don't see reality.
What just happened in this election is that the culturally left-behind hit back.

They won but will still claim they are victims of the "liberal elite." Actually they are victims of bad theology that has tutored them for generations to accept myth for fact.
It's no wonder that these folks believe lies more easily than truth. Sure the bad economy played a part in the mid-term results, but so did bad theology that has made a virtue out of being misinformed. We're sorry to hear of the problems from Schaefer's life - that the reality he lived was different from what he and his dad talked about for years. But it doesn't mean that the voters are divorced from reality.
If you're spending more you don't have, or see Iran preparing for it's own version of end times, maybe you want elected oficials who share your concerns.
The longer people see the election as a paranoid reaction against President Obama's background, they will remain in the background.
It will only be the end times for their careers.

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