On Thu, 2 Nov 2000 kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca wrote:
> And I think it profoundly negligent to assume that social mechanisms
> are not reproduced by often compliant and sometimes unreflective
> fantasies. I don't see how GW Bush could rise to such popularity if
> not through some sort of collective psychosis.
>
> ken
>
Yep, that's it: the eighty million plus dollars from rich corporations, the existence of mass media to drive home his political message, the existence of an economic system that allows the concentration of wealth so that such a dunderhead could sail through Yale and Harvard-- those are definitely trivial factors. As C. gets bored of pointing out, saying it's due to "collective psychosis" is a form of intellectual laziness. It's not an explanation, and it adds nothing to our understanding of why privileged sons like Shrub achieve positions of political power.
A simple substitution test: take away all the economic and social factors that you ignore above--could Shrub be a viable presidential candidate? Of course not! It's a category error, as old G. Ryle used to say: using a psychological concept to explain extra- psychological facts is a logical fallacy.
Miles