I picked up a recent issue of Time magazine while sitting in my dentist’s waiting room the other day, and came across this article by neoconservative “public intellectual” William Kristol, titled—get this—“Why Americans Should Feel Happy.”
Kristol observes that
“About three-quarters of Americans, according to surveys, think the country is on the wrong track. About two-thirds of the public disapprove of the job performance of President Bush, and an even higher number disdain Congress.”
Being a lifelong worshipper of state power, Kristol seems a little concerned about this development. Surely, so many people being down in the mouth about the US Federal Megastate bodes ill for Western civilization, or so Kristol seems to think.
So he endeavors to bolster his countrymen’s understandably waning faith in their government by reminding them that there was another time when they were so pessimistic about their oh-so-precious social democracy, and he insists that they turned out to be wrong:
“The widespread pessimism in the early 1990s about the course of the country turned out to be unwarranted. The rest of the decade featured impressive economic growth, a falling crime rate, successful reform of the welfare system and a reasonably peaceful world. Perhaps the problems weren’t so bad in the first place, or perhaps the political system produced politicians, like Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, who were able to deal with the problems. But, in any case, the country got back on course.”
I literally burst out in laughter when I read the above paragraph. Is this schmuck for real? Methinks Mr. Kristol, through his Weekly Standard, has spent so much time spinning propaganda for the War Party—which consisted of some of the biggest, most fallacious whoppers in the entire history of propaganda—that he now appears to be so lost in his own make-believe world as to have no contact with reality whatsoever. Perhaps his inability to discern 300 million individuals from something he calls ”the country” gives us a clue.
Does he sincerely believe that politicians saved us from ourselves in the previous decade???
Oh yes, where O where would we be, O Bubba, O Newtish One, O “America’s Mayor,” without your firm, guiding hands? O praise and glory be to thee upon the highest, O wise ones!
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