Ivins: Bush living in "Fantasyland"

[Bluebear]

One of the eerie things about Bush's news conference performance was just how divorced from reality he is. Not only is he still claiming that we're going to find the WMD and that Saddam was linked to 9-11, but he actually claimed that we went to war to save the United Nations' credibility. The man is living in Fantasyland.

As Lewis Lapham points out in an essay in the current Harper's, we are seeing "the systematic substitution of ideological certainty for reasonable doubt across the entire spectrum of issues bearing on the public health and welfare. … The disdain for disloyal or unpatriotic fact defines the Bush Administration's approach not only to questions likely to embarrass the oil, weapons and insurance industries but also to those that might interfere with its fanciful conceptions of war and money."

Lapham cites the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking," a depressing collection of instances in which the administration has either censored or ignored scientific fact.

Those who have known Bush for a long time know he is capable of leaving the realm of fact and logic in favor of his "gut" or "instinct" on several issues. It seems to me that the trait is becoming more pronounced.

Denying that Iraq is a rapidly escalating tragedy will do nothing to help us or the Iraqis get out of it. Pointing out that it's a mess does not make one a fan of Osama bin Laden or a bigot concerning "brown-skinned people."

Let's get a grip here, team.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/columnists/molly_ivins/8510991.htm?1c

[zydeco]

1. Yet when you confront a * fanatic

on this. using reason, they will automatically add the sign of the cross and call it +reason.

[unblock]

3. very clever!

i like that: to the christian fascists, reason is +reason.

[nostamj]

2. "Fantasyland" or "Bushworld"

it's all the same HELL to us.

go Molly!