The Evil Party and the Stupid Party Two under-the-radar incidents on the news caught my attention recently. Indeed, these episodes don't really rise to the level of "incidents." More like footnotes. First was a mistake by George Stephanopoulos on ABC news. He was speaking about the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. At that time, he assured his audience, Japanese "kamikazes" flew into action and decimated the US fleet. Uhhh, kamikazes were suicide missions that were not used by the Japanese until the Battle of the Philippines in 1944, and only then because of the increasingly desperate situation faced by the Imperial military. Does this make a difference ? Yes. Why ? Because such profound ignorance of the basics of WWII may well indicate serious deficiency of knowledge more generally. Even to just consider WWII, botching something so elementary tells people that someone's comments about the issues of the time which still effect us in the here-and-now may well be , to be candid about it, ill-informed and false, not worth hearing and quite possibly grossly misleading. It was with good reason that the press jumped all over George W Bush's fauxs pas; he was putting his ignorance on display, and telling one and all that he is not a careful thinker, is inadequately informed, and his judgement cannot be trusted. Now we have a former ( very ) close advisor to William Clinton telling us, in so many words, that his opinions about race relations involving Asians, the Holocaust, colonialism and its legacy, global military strategy, authoritarian political systems, and still other subjects, are all questionable, or at a minimum, should not be taken seriously without review. Not to overdo the importance of knowledge of WWII., but it IS one of four wars ( not counting the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan ) which every American needs basic knowledge about, namely, the Revolution, the Civil War, and Viet Nam. The issues associated with these wars remains current and, in cases, may well be important in political debate. Not to care to get one's facts right about the issues of these wars, if one is serious about politics is, simply, irresponsible. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The other "incident" concerned Laura Bush interviewed by Larry King. Mrs Bush said that she favors : ( 1 ) homosexual marriage, and ( 2 ) abortion The implications of these views of hers should not require comment. But clearly, not only was her husband basically an incompetent, he was selling conservative voters a bill of goods. About which an "I told you so" seems to be justified. I never could fathom how George Bush was able to hoodwink Republican voters so completely. He struck me as a phoney from Day # 1, and it seemed so obvious that no-one could possibly miss it. Yet millions bought his song and dance and seemed to love him for it. One more reason to repeat the characterization of the two parties which I have used before, in which there are two parties in the United States, the Evil Party and the Stupid Party. This now seems to be objective truth. Except that the Evil Party is also stupid about any number of issues, and the Stupid Party includes its own version of evil. My humble opinion Billy
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