You Say ToMAHto

Barbara O'Brien at Mahablog has an excellent post up. It is definitely worth a read. In it she discusses, in her usually clear and concise way, how she has come to realize a major difference in how we on the left and the right analyze or react to the babblings of Dubya.

Have you ever noticed that, on a very simple level, righties support Bush because of what he says and lefties oppose him because of what he does?

For example, I'm sure at some point you've crossed paths with a rightie who is fired up about the "liberation" of Iraq. You know the dance. You make faces; the rightie assumes you oppose the war because you don't want the Iraqi people liberated. But in fact you oppose the war because the Iraqi people aren't being liberated. At best they're in a transitional phase between despots. Americans are fighting and dying to establish an Islamic theocracy, assuming civil war doesn't take down the "nation-building" process first. But the rightie won't even listen to this. Bush says we're liberating Iraq, and that's it.

I have noticed the same thing when talking to all the conservatives I work with. They have all the talking points and the rhetoric down pat but refuse to recognize the reality. They twist your opposition to the war in Iraq into opposition of freedom and democracy in the Middle East. The frightening thing is I think they are sincere.

A good example of how the right takes Bush's words at face value and fail to temper them with his actions is in homeland security. They don't seem to remember that he opposed the creation of the department in the beginning but they listen raptly as he tells them how secure they are and how DHS has protected them from the "evildoers". Nobody except us whackos on the left ask him to show us how we are more secure. Ports? Planes? Chemical factories? Nuclear Power Plants? Electric transmission lines? Subways? Freight trains? Water supplies? Food supplies? How are we more secure Mr. President than before 9/11? Can you show us how the billions of dollars we have spent have been put to use?

Finally, the purported revelationary speech the other day is proof positive that he believes that if he says we are winning the war on terror in Iraq and the Iraqis are better off today than under Saddam then, in fact, we are and they are. The hell with all the evidence to the contrary. Ignore the man behind the curtain. Trust me. Barbara quotes one of the talking monkeys of the right John Hindraker's comment on the speech.

This was another in a series of great speeches in which President Bush has outlined his strategies and policies in the war.

Totally unconnected to reality or the actual content in the speech. As Barbara says,

And, of course, he did nothing of the sort. He presents goals. And there's nothing wrong with most of his goals. They are perfectly fine goals. But his policies and strategies, such as they are, are not sufficient to achieve those goals. Iraq is drifting toward either theocracy or chaos.

Go read the whole post as it is spot on.