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How do the moral majority see the rest of us?

If President Bush wins, it will be interesting to see what happens to the nature of anti-Americanism in other parts of the world. At the moment, surveys are reporting that Americans themselves are not unpopular, although the present Administration is widely despised. How would that change if the Americans seemed to take the decision to approve of Bush, after all the (perceived) bad things he has done?

Hunter S Thompson makes the same point:

The question this year is not whether President Bush is acting more
and more like the head of a fascist government but if the American
people want it that way. That is what this election is all about…

Martini Republic gives us a snapshot of the Second World War 1,138 days after Pearl Harbor, today being 1,138 days after 9/11.

Of course, the Poles, British, French and others had been fighting for some time before Pearl Harbor happened, but the point still applies. The territorial advance for this sort of war is not on the ground, but in the mind – and there it’s looking a lot more like Dunkirk than the relief of Paris.

John Dean writes a sobering article from a lawyer’s perspective on the likely legal wrangling that will follow next Tuesday’s vote.

(Minutes from the No. 10 Lobby briefing of journalists)

“Asked if the Government remained committed to a draft Bill on [corporate manslaughter laws], the Prime Minister’s Spokesperson said that it would be inappropriate to comment on the contents of the forthcoming Queen’s Speech. Put to her that she had commented in detail on the Gambling Bill, the PMS pointed out that the Gambling Bill had been included in last year’s Queen’s Speech.”

There is an interesting piece of opinion research available today from the Programme on International Policy Attitudes. The document itself is not long, and worth reading, but the take-away is that the Bush and Kerry supporters questioned don’t merely disagree on matters of policy or principle, they disagree on some fundamental matters of fact. Facts subject to partisan difference include whether Iraq was involved in 9/11 (Bush supporters: yes, Kerry supporters: no), and whether the world supports the Iraq war (Bush supporters: yes, Kerry supporters: no).

It’s just a pity that Jacques Derrida isn’t around to appreciate this.

There are a few theories floating around as to the reasons for this strange disjuncture. These range from “the Bush supporters have been deceived by the Government”, to “George Bush’s supporters are a horde of ignoramuses“. The last is a pleasing historical echo of John Stuart Mill’s description of the Tories as “the stupid party”.

My guess is that those polled are engaging in a bit of reverse-justification: they know the political mast they’ve nailed their colours to, and they have to mangle the facts to get to the answer they had already thought of. Rather like the reverse of this opinion poll (RealAudio file) from Yes-Minister.com.