Was the first debate Bush's "Ceausescu Moment"?

[displacedyankeedem]

I was watching the clip of how citizens of Romania who were supposed to cheer at all of the communist bullshit rhetoric he espoused turned on him and started to boo. Before state-owned TV cut off the transmission, he had a look of utter bewilderment and disbelief at what he was hearing and seeing.

At the first debate in Miami, Bush had the exact same expression on his face as he tried to spout off his right-wing talking points which play well to his pre-screened and vetted crowds. Used to hearing everyone talk about how great he was, he didn't know how to handle himself in front of an audience, and it showed.

A few days later, Ceausescu was driven from power. I hope the analogy holds true in 15 days.

[chookie]

1. Back in the USSR

I used to enjoy monitoring "news" broadcasts from the Soviet Union. They could be a real howl. No matter how miserable things were, they were always upbeat, and insisting that not only things were going well, but better than ever.
But the Russian people are not stupid, and always understood what BS all of it was, and managed to get facts through alternative means, and thus usually understood what was realy going on.

There was a method of information gathering from the Cold War, that even goes back to WWII, where Allies monitored broadcasts and figured out the facts by doing content analysis. Thus, if the Nazis claimed a glorious victory which would soon end the war, the Allies knew they had actually suffered horrible casualties; when the Soviets claimed harvests were up 3487%, Allies could tell that famine was occurring.

Germans in WWII used to listen to BBC in order to find out what was really happening. Why? Because they always (used to) tell the truth -- never sugar-coated it or made it propaganda.

I am astounded at how America "stupedia" mimicks the old Soviet model.

Disturbing, but the good news is that Americans are not QUITE as stupid as they are assumed to be. I am constantly amazed by my focus groups telling me that in spite of the reason that they just get their news from the mainstream, that they have figured out, using only their own brains and faculties of reason, that Bush is selling them very dangerous bullshit.