To an objective observer, it would seem that this last week was a very bad one for Bush followers.
Iraq is on the verge of total sectarian war and collapse. Multiple conservatives have declared that Bush lost the war. A slew of new polls show that Bush's presidency is dying, with all but the most blindly loyal followers having abandoned him and decided that he's untrustworthy. Even a huge majority of the U.S. military now believe that it's time to leave Iraq. And the Senate Intelligence Committee looks prepared -- with the support of at least two Republican Senators -- to hold investigative hearings into the Administration's warrantless, lawless eavesdropping on Americans.
But the notion that this was a very bad week for Bush is only true for those who live in the world of facts. Bush followers are lucky. They have an outstanding capacity to create their own fantasy world where any facts which reflect negatively on the Leader are simply discarded and ignored. Just this last week alone provided numerous, glaring examples of how this disturbing fact-denial process works.
FANTASY # 1
Event: A CBS News poll shows Bush at an all-time low approval rating of 34%.
Response of Bush followers: The poll is biased, unfair, and therefore we can happily ignore the results....
The Joys of Living in a Fantasyland
To an objective observer, it would seem that this last week was a very bad one for Bush followers.
Iraq is on the verge of total sectarian war and collapse. Multiple conservatives have declared that Bush lost the war. A slew of new polls show that Bush's presidency is dying, with all but the most blindly loyal followers having abandoned him and decided that he's untrustworthy. Even a huge majority of the U.S. military now believe that it's time to leave Iraq. And the Senate Intelligence Committee looks prepared -- with the support of at least two Republican Senators -- to hold investigative hearings into the Administration's warrantless, lawless eavesdropping on Americans.
But the notion that this was a very bad week for Bush is only true for those who live in the world of facts. Bush followers are lucky. They have an outstanding capacity to create their own fantasy world where any facts which reflect negatively on the Leader are simply discarded and ignored. Just this last week alone provided numerous, glaring examples of how this disturbing fact-denial process works.
FANTASY # 1
Event: A CBS News poll shows Bush at an all-time low approval rating of 34%.
Response of Bush followers: The poll is biased, unfair, and therefore we can happily ignore the results.
FANTASY # 2
Event: Multiple other polls released in the next two days after the CBS poll also show Bush at or near all-time low approval ratings.
Response of Bush follower: All of the polls are biased and therefore we can happily ignore the results.
FANTASY # 3
Event: Sectarian violence reaches an all-time high in Iraq as all signs point to the beginning of a civil war.
Response of Bush followers: There are no real problems in Iraq. "Hysterical news coverage" of the violence was "exaggerated". Things are peaceful and great in Iraq. The whole "civil war" thing is just a fiction invented by the Bush-hating media.
FANTASY # 4
Event: Multiple polls show that a majority of the public opposes warrantless eavesdropping and believe the President broke the law by implementing the NSA eavesdropping program.
Response of Bush followers: From the always-fact-ignoring Bush follower John Hinderaker:
"How did the secret wiretapping program 'tarnish' the administration's 'tough-on-terror image'? It didn't. It enhanced it, and the public has solidly backed the administration's position"
(emphasis added; no links provided by John for this claim).
Fantasy # 5
Event: A Zogby poll reported that even the U.S. troops in Iraq believe we should withdraw this year.
Response of Bush followers: The poll is biased, unfair, and therefore we can happily ignore the results.
That's just in one week. Since 2000, our country has been governed based on this genuinely disturbing delusional process of simply discarding unpleasant facts and pretending they don't exist.
George Bush is a beloved and popular Leader. Iraq is stable, peaceful and democratic. We are winning the war in Iraq. We are winning the war on terror. We are winning everything. Saddam really did have WMDs but he hid them in Syria or in a basement somewhere and we just haven't found them yet because of the media. And liberals control nothing in government -- Bush followers control everything, including every aspect of the war in Iraq -- but if we do lose the war, Bush bears no blame and it's all the fault of liberals.
It may not be the healthiest or most honest way to look at the world, but that really is how our country has been governed for the last 5 years, and counting.
--posted by Glenn Greenwald
