A Few Reasons Why You Still Can't Believe Conservatives

Okay, so I didn't exactly trust George Bush's call for unity in his acceptance speech, but I did agree that it is sorely needed. It seemed sort of like a nice, if obligatory, gesture at the time. It took him exactly one day, though, to show how utterly disingenuous he was and how credulous any of us were to believe him. The smirk returned. He confidently proclaimed that his huge win shows the people support his policy ideas and that we can look forward to the disastrous privatization of Social Security and the certitude that corporations can expect huge tax cuts for the next ten years. Privatization being a good way for the government to shirk its responsibility to us and ensure, well, further tax cuts for corporations. I'm feeling nostalgic for Bush I, who could at least get us out of Iraq shortly after he took us there and raise taxes a bit when he saw that not to do so would be to imperil our country.
Understand me clearly on this point--it seemed a bit odd to me that after winning reelection at least partly on scaring the people with impending universal gay marriage, the victors could be seen with the much discussed Cheney daughter and her partner on stage. I'm coming from the modified liberal position on this that while my personal beliefs are at odds with the lifestyle, I wouldn't presume to try to legislate her from not living it or try to withhold any rights that should be common to all of us. Anyway, either the Vice President would throw his own daughter under the bus on this, or his party merely used the issue to play on a lot of people's views on the subject. I take the position that the Republican Party wears God on their sleeves and in effect uses God, which is a shamefully manipulative thing.
I've been getting a lot of solace from some articles I've been reading by the likes of Maureen Dowd, E.J. Dionne, Jr., Donna Britt, and Michael Moore. One article I read reminds us that the average January temperature in Ottawa is 12.2 degrees Fahrenheit. While watching Bill Maher's show tonight, I found myself nodding with two conservatives, for a while. They both brought up the point that when liberals belittle those of faith, they lose their ears. It's true--what's really wrong with current conservatives is certainly not that they believe, it's in fact that they pervert their religions and simplify them so that they boil down to a few wedge issues and place themselves at the mercy of the conservative economic agenda, rather gullibly. Andrew Sullivan was making this point that the reason for this current divide is each side's demonizing the other. Then Noam Chomsky was on, and Sullivan began chiding Maher for not disavowing Chomsky's claims, as well as Michael Moore's. He proved his own point and left as little hope as when the show began that things would change any time in the near future.

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