I Heart Hating Bush

I freely admit, Michael Moore is my hero, I throw things at the TV during our commander-in-cheifs' speeches every once in a while, and I've marched in protests shouting "Not My President" at the very top of my lungs. He's so easy to hate- his manipulation of government and power are often so transparent that I often find it insulting that he doesn't try to cover it up more. I am also insulted that his speech writers aren't trying harder to convince me that he gives a shit about anything other than big business profit margins. But I was motivated the other day to attempt to climb inside the "red state" mindset. I mean, people did vote for the man. Not quite enough to actually elect him, but let's not get into that.

The interesting this is that as I attempted to search out pro-Bush sites, it seemed as though there were way less than anti-Bush. In fact, the Bush-is-the-anti-christ sites kept popping up. I did however find "Blogs for Bush"~ kind of an interesting smattering of ideas. I had no idea that Ann Coulter was a deadhead, for example. I never expected to have much more in common with the woman other than hair color. Too much wading into the politics of her site, however, made me want to hurl the laptop. But the proliferation of hatred for Bush across the internet got me thinking. The internet is likely a much more reliable look into the psyche of the masses- Rupert Murdoch has yet to get his grubby hands all over it (completely, anyway). So why, other than the obvious, do so many of us love to hate Bush? Do we need a bad guy to blame? Are all of the ills of the capitalist regime and outdated two-party system perfectly encapsulated by this one man? I'm no where near liking this guy, but I would be scared to wear some of the t-shirts that I came across. Of course, I found some equally scary right-winger shirts (the difference with those being that I didn't chuckle as I read them).

Anyway, point being, I think that we are so obsessed with duality that we're missing the point. Liberals versus Conservatives, Republicans versus Democrats, Red staters versus Blue~ is that really all that we can talk about? I'm wading through "What Liberal Media", and we recently rented "Outfoxed", and so I'm boning up on which news media are more prone to censorship than others. But the discourse is starting to feel more like a debate as to "who's on our team" rather than an expose on censored stories. The stories that do get censored are shocking enough, though, and the underlying right wing conservative agenda that the media execs filter through is frightening. But is this pitting of one side against another, and the enforcement of a two-party system keeping us distracted from the real issues? Is it just a means of keeping us engaged in the continuous war that Orwell described, in which society opresses itself with neverending war to keep the citizens occupied? Are we doing it to ourselves?

Maybe it's not Bush's fault as much as our own. We watch documentaries, and read articles, but then make the same apathetic choice to sit on the couch and be instructed as to what to do and think next by the panel of experts we rely on, provided by our media source of choice. Can you blame us? With bills to pay, a life to lead, and ads convincing us to constantly consume more and therefore create a need to work even harder, who has time to break this cycle? Who has the energy to think outside the box enough even to coin a more original phrase than "think outside the box"? I don't know, but I'm sure some expert out there will explain it to me.