The Fall of the House of Labor AtD.93 Republicans?

[Carvill John]

> I always worried
> about the caricatures of Dubya as a brainless goofball, since Not
> Being Taken Seriously is a great way for a leader to get away with all
> kinds of nasty stuff. Why bother with an indepth analysis and critique
> of policy when you can just laugh 'what an idiot'?



Yes, the 'Bush is an idiot' claim can cut both ways. The Republicans actually used that angle in quite clever ways. One way was that they used Bush's downhome stoopidity to portray him as a good ol' boy rancher from Texas, someone the average American could relate too. Stupidity can be made an appealing quality. Another way was, the idea that Bush was a simpleton being so widespread, they could claim he wasn't half as daft as people thought, which in a sense was true: watch video footage of Bush talking, back before he was 'elected' and you see someone who is much more articulate and much less awkward than the Bush we all came to know. He's still an idiot of course, but in some ways he's not as much of a total simpleton as he came across when he was President. How much of that is deliberate is open to debate. And as you say, laughing at the idiot can serve as a convenient distraction.


This is one of those threads where someone (Alice in this case) *seems* to be talking about the same subject as me, but I struggle to understand exactly how what she is saying relates to what I am saying. I don't have any big point to make or axe to grind so I'm not too bothered. But Pynchon undeniably does deal with contemporary political matters in ATD.



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