> <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-1102058,00.html>
>
> Why I will be rooting for a George Bush election victory
>
> Matthew Parris
Thank you so much, my dear Mr. Parris, for your excellent advice. Don't know how we ex-colonials have gotten on for the last 200+ years without it.
Shrub and his advisers are producing a colossal failure. But the most dimwitted people in the world haven't realized this yet. So we should make sure that the colossal failure continues four more years, until it is clear to everyone.
Unfortunately, the"right honorable gentleman's" (as I believe he was called when he was a Tory MP) argument has a couple of flaws. One is that, even after another four years, there will still be plenty of people who will believe that Bush was right, because America-Firsters (which is who the Bush supporters really are) are born eternal. Already, in fact, the real true neocon believers are complaining that their faith is indeed the one and only True Church, but that the Bush people are just incompetent in putting into action. That position will not be shaken even after four, eight, or twelve more years (assuming Cheney and Rice succeed Bush in the presidency -- and they will, if Ralph keeps popping up to throw the elections to them :-) ).
The second flaw is that Mr. Parris's philosophy of history and government seems to be that there are a succession of fads which temporarily capture the public fancy and take a few years to be thoroughly "run into the ground," whereupon the next fad pops up. Perhaps history is after all only "sound and fury, signifying nothing," but I hope we could do a bit better than that.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ After the Buddha died, people still kept pointing to his shadow in a cave for centuries—an enormous, dreadful shadow. God is dead: but the way people are, there may be, for millennia, caves in which his shadow is still pointed to. — And we — we must still overcome his shadow! —Friedrich Nietzsche