Social Distortion

An old friend (Tim, who has recently begun reading and commenting) sent me an interesting email, listing some suggested reasons as to why Obama is slipping in the polls. It seems intelligent and well reasoned and might even be right. It could be, though, that there is a simpler reason: this is the same country that twice elected George Bush.

Scott (commenting as LSD) pointed me to a Camille Paglia essay at Salon. An excerpt:

Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain's imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain's credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain's sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let's turn the damned page.

We finally have a woman VP candidate and a black presidential candidate. Obama was raised in Hawaii, Palin in Alaska. Apparently there were no qualified blacks or women in the lower 48. Who knew we were looking in the wrong place all this time?

Since 2001, the percentage of Americans believing that humans are causing climate change has dropped by 4%. Dropped. Meanwhile, in the last century the average length of a heat wave in Western Europe has doubled.

By 2007, 41% of Americans believed that it was Saddam Hussein, not Al Qaeda, who was responsible for 9-11. Worse, 85% of service personnel in Iraq believed that the US mission was mainly to retaliate for 9-11.