Hey, if you all want to shoot each other, I’m not going to get in your way. Have at it! Does anyone know where I can get a good deal on a bulletproof vest? How much would it cost to outfit my Civic hatchback like the Popemobile?
In the last couple of weeks, I have noticed a strange public hypnosis going on. The Bush campaign has been capitalizing on Gore’s fudgebrained little fibs by repeating the stock phrases: Gore is a liar, but I am an honest man with integrity. I am an honest man with integrity. I am an honest man.
It’s working marvelously. I now hear man/woman-on-the-street interviews in which people happily say “Gore is a liar. Bush is an honest man with integrity.” As though the latter follows a priori from the former. If you missed it, here’s the structure: Gore lies. Therefore, Bush does not. Surely anyone can see the problem with that argument.
Oh, and a woman interviewed this morning by an NPR reporter remarked that she’s going to vote for Bush because she preferred his answer over Gore’s about what kind of baseball stadium the candidates liked best. She spoke earnestly about it, with the gravity that I would apply to discussing nuclear disarmament treaties or environmental destruction. As someone said earlier in the thread, “This is America,” whatever that means. (“Oh, no! I’ve confused my home country with Finland yet again!”) I’ve really lost interest in the election.
My final remark is about the cult of individualism. Lots of folks believe that they should have the right to not wear a seatbelt, smoke, drink, etc, as long as it doesn’t affect anybody else. But it’s a myth than in modern society you can be purely independent of your neighbors. For instance, the insurance companies have complex statistical models which predict with accuracy how many people will be ejected from their cars in road accidents each month, how many will die from lung cancer, and how many will accidentally kill a friend or their child with their helpful handgun. The insurance companies calculate premiums such that their profits will not be damaged by the costs of caring for these “individualists”. So if you won’t wear your seatbelt, insist on keeping your gun in a shoebox in your closet, smoke like a fiend, and susbscribe to the rugged American individualist way of thinking, then may I suggest you pay your own hospital bills when you crash your car without a seatbelt? Otherwise, you cause my premiums to be artificially inflated. One could say that you are stealing from me. I’d get paid more if my employer didn’t have to fork out so much in insurance premiums. When your kid shoots his friend in the face with your gun, my tax dollars support the ambulance service that comes to scrape up the mess. Unless you live like the Montana Militia, your individualism is riding on my tax dollars. And that’s dishonest. If you want to make an honorable claim to living the individualist life, then the right thing to do is to remove yourself altogether from the social contract.
I’m just going to return to quietly writing blueprints of the public service and suburban-sprawl-prevention programs I’ll institute when I become the benevolent dictator of the US. Warning to all: banning beige houses will be my first official act after the revolution.
[This message has been edited by hobson (edited 10-30-2000).]
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