Two Unrelated Stories

Reading today about Bush's efforts to sell his failed war policies, I noted that "approval" of the war was going up (in actuality, the rate of disapproval was going down). I wondered why reasonable, intelligent people, for surely not all of Bush's supporters belong to his half of the human population, would support a polyanna repetition: Stay the course, stay the course, 9/11, stay the course.... Then I read a completely unrelated story.

India is facing a shortage of girl children due to selective abortion of girls. There are cultural reasons for this but the amazing thing about the story is the practice is most common among educated Indians of all castes and religions. The practice is shocking to us but apparently so self-evident to them that the more educated, richer families, the ones with access to clinics with ultrasound for gender determination and abortion for the unfortunate girl children, are the ones engaging in the practice of aborting girl children. Steeped in the belief that women are second-class citizens, the people are killing girls.

What does that have to do with us? It indicates to me that intelligent people believing and practicing obviously erroneous beliefs isn't an American phenomenon. We are not the only people in the world to delude ourselves into thinking something wrong is correct. It explains much to me, particularly concerning the existence of intelligent neocons: People who think it is perfectly all right for America to violate another nation's sovereignty to achieve an American goal, as was done in Pakistan just yesterday. There are those who think social Darwinism is a good thing, it's obvious that if we root out the weak, the race will improve. There are those out there who think corruption is a perfectly good way to run the country and who back it up with their contributions to the Republican National Committee. There are those out there who think torture is a positive and a weapon in the war on terrorism rather than a cheapening of America and a violation of our principles. There are perfectly rational people who think it's a good thing to impose their self-evidently right religious principles on those of us who choose to believe God is something other than the petulant abusive father described in the Old Testament. The list can go on but one thing female infanticide tells me: Deluded beliefs are difficult to shake, even for the intelligent.

Must be even more difficult for someone like Bush, pawn and puppet of the Neocons, to shake his delusions and finally see that all we've done in Iraq is foster the formation of a Shiite theocratic satellite state of Iran and a civil war at the cost of over 2,200 American lives, 16,000 wounded American soldiers and uncounted but believed to be over 100,000 Iraqi deaths. Bush's legacy is already determined: He will be remembered as the President who tried to grab imperial power and who destroyed America's reputation in the world.