Mark Crispin Miller on Bush and cyberspace discourse

[Paul Mackin]

Miller sounds like the p-list on a bad day. Feeling sorry for himself and
bemoaning the fact that the great unwashed won't pay him him proper heed. And
Bush is such an easy target. His deficiencies are as legion as Doug's
personalities. But, under the circumstances the  country is now in, reminding
us that Bush was a mistake is quite  beside the point. It is inconceivable
that anyone who might gain a power position in the U.S. would pursue present
national options in a significantly different manner.  In other words, as far
as Doug's purposes are concerned, Bush is a big red herring. Or maybe a big
straw man.

But be thankful for small favors. At least Miller doesn't apply the karma
theory, and there is no salivating over body counts.


        P.



Doug Millison wrote:

> "[...] What I had discovered was not flattering to Bush. Close study of his
> jabberings not only reconfirms the fact of his supreme unfitness for the
> presidential job (a fact that even certain of his own supporters grudgingly
> conceded, prior to 9/11), but also throws into relief that bone-deep
> nastiness which all the spin about his "likeability" could never quite
> obscure. His thin skin, his short fuse, his elephantine memory for slights
> (and quickness to imagine them), and--above all--his perfect lack of
> empathy shine through in countless of his gaffes, and in most of his jokes.
> It is (or so I argue in the book) all there in the man's own utterances,
> which, in cold print, are every bit as edifying as the propaganda drive on
> his behalf was mystifying.
>
> Once I started to promote the book, I learned that Bush's psychopathic
> traits exert a strong appeal to his most zealous fans, many of whom took
> full advantage of the first-strike capabilities of cyber-space to let me
> know their thoughts. For example, I received this e-mail in
> mid-August--just after W's big speech on stem cell researchÜwith "THE BUSH
> DYSLEXICON" written in the subject line:
>
> Mark . . .
> I just finished your above-named book (borrowed it, wouldn't buy it) and it
> confirms my suspicion that you are a typical left-wing jerkoff !!! Did you
> happen to catch Bush's speech last night. . . . he really put it up your
> left-wing asshole . . . asshole!
> Fred Fittin
>
> To call that message "anti-intellectual" would be a comic understatement.
> Since it's unlikely that he read the book, or knows anybody who would have
> a copy, Fred could not be said so much to hate it as to have despised the
> very thought of it. Any act of critical intelligence, any reasoned effort
> to see through the mask of power, enrages types like Fred. Such high-strung
> troops demand a God-like father-figure who will always reassure them that
> they needn't think, and so they snap into attack mode any time they sense a
> threat to such authority; and in this case, their fury is especially
> intense, because their idol is so small a man that even they can see that
> something's missing. Thus Fred cast that feeble speech of W's, which
> thrilled no-one, as if it had been one of Hitler's finest--a
> rafter-rattling diatribe that really put it to, or up, the assholes of the
> left.
> [...]"
>
> http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no9/miller.html