Re: Election

Denyse O'Leary wrote:

"...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...."

This has not been just Canadians. One of my former highly educated colleagues has been sending his coworkers and me Web site references with little or no basis in fact that go to extremes vilifying W. (A few such sites had substance.) When I saw Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," I could hear sneering snickers throughout the audience at the pictures of W sitting in the elementary school classroom. The response of many to W could have been accurately characterized as one gigantic sneer. The hatred was clearly deep and extreme. Obviously, however, the sneerers did not constitute a majority of the nation, and by now some of their sneers have probably been wiped off. The question is, now that these people have been left powerless, how are they going to express themselves?

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Denyse O'Leary<mailto:oleary@sympatico.ca>
  To: Ted Davis<mailto:TDavis@messiah.edu> ; asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Cc: drsyme@cablespeed.com<mailto:drsyme@cablespeed.com>
  Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 9:12 AM
  Subject: 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
  Origins of Life in the Universe (Augsburg Fortress, 2004) at

  http://www.designorchance.com/press.html<http://www.designorchance.com/press.html>

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  My blog is http://www.christianity.ca/faith/features/weblog.html<http://www.christianity.ca/faith/features/weblog.html>

  Denyse O'Leary
  14 Latimer Avenue
  Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5N 2L8
  Tel: 416 485-2392
  Fax: (phone or e-mail first)
  oleary@sympatico.ca<mailto:oleary@sympatico.ca>
  www.designorchance.com<http://www.designorchance.com/>
Received on Thu Nov 4 05:53:40 2004