Re: Election

  Ted Davis wrote:
> I also hope that the few Europeans on this list will comment on my
> comments. Do you think I'm on target, or not, relative to the differences
> between Europe and the USA that I have identified?
>
> ted

Here's a comment from Canada: I have been astonished by the unreflective, reflexive hatred many
of my fellow citizens, including serious Christians, feel for W. It's like he embodies
everything they despise. And I am not sure why.

Case in point: My jaw dropped when I discovered that several members of my Christian fellowship
group seriously entertained the idea that W was the mastermind behind 911.

I had assumed that "Bush plotted 911!" (if believed by a North American) was good evidence for
membership in a lunatic fringe.

The evidence? it turned out to be W's supposed reaction when he was reading a story about a
billy goat to a kindergarten. Allegedly, he was "too calm."

Well, as I pointed out at the time, I don't know just how I would react - while I was reading to
a kindergarten - if I heard that thousands of my fellow citizens had been killed in a terror
attack and that therefore we are now at war with somebody (but WHO, exactly?).

Any president would have to get off the premises without setting off a community-wide panic of
rumours that would spread quickly through the cell/Internet system. But my friends had not so
much as considered that W would have to take those kinds of things into account.

I'm tempted to suggest that as Canada settles into the mindset of a one-party state, people
adopt the attitudes that go with such a state, including unreflective, reflexive hatred of those
they are encouraged to hate.

One outcome is a decline in real-world political attitudes. For example, most of the Canadians
who bleat this kind of stuff don't realize that Kerry has political alliances that would require
him to take a harder line with Canada in trade talks. Thus, given that the States is by far our
biggest customer, a Kerry victory could affect them in more unpleasant ways than a Bush victory
-- but, oh well, those people would then just blame it all on the legacy of W.

cheers,

Denyse

-- 
Read brief excerpts from my book, By Design or by Chance?: The Growing Controversy On the
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