Thanks for your reply Zombie. We members of the Reality Based Community use data, polls, charts, etc. to support our arguments. You use pictures. And spin. You are coming dangerously close to Orwellian 'Ignorance is Knowledge' type thinking, my friend, when you disparage higher education. Education helps develop critical thinking and knowledge, things that come in handy when choosing a president and making sense of the world around you. Here in the Reality Based Community, education is good thing, not a bad thing.
And the lack of eduation among Bush voters explains a lot of his support. The University of Maryland just released the results of a poll which exposed the detachment between Bush supporters and reality. Here is a summary of some of the findings and commentary. Absolutely amazing stuff. Up until now I didn't really understand how in the world Bush could have 50% support, but this poll explains it: mass ignorance. A good 60% to 70% of Bush's supporters have a complete disconnect with reality. That's not an opinion or spin; that's quantifiable truth backed up by solid data below.
Check this out: (WARNING - it's long, and contains factually accurate data that may not be appropriate for those outside the the Reality Based Community)
-Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%).
-Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.
-Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission.
-Steven Kull, director of UM-PIPA, comments, "One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these beliefs is that they perceive the Bush administration confirming them. Interestingly, this is one point on which Bush and Kerry supporters agree." Eighty-two percent of Bush supporters perceive the Bush administration as saying that Iraq had WMD (63%) or that Iraq had a major WMD program (19%).
-Asked whether the US should have gone to war with Iraq if US intelligence had concluded that Iraq was not making WMD or providing support to al Qaeda, 58% of Bush supporters said the US should not have, and 61% assume that in this case the President would not have. Kull continues, "To support the president and to accept that he took the US to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance, and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about prewar Iraq."
-Despite an abundance of evidence--including polls conducted by Gallup International in 38 countries, and more recently by a consortium of leading newspapers in 10 major countries--only 31% of Bush supporters recognize that the majority of people in the world oppose the US having gone to war with Iraq. Forty-two percent assume that views are evenly divided, and 26% assume that the majority approves.
-Similarly, 57% of Bush supporters assume that the majority of people inthe world would favor Bush's re-election; 33% assumed that views are evenlydivided and only 9% assumed that Kerry would be preferred. A recent poll by GlobeScan and PIPA of 35 of the major countries around the world found that in 30, a majority or plurality favored Kerry, while in just 3 Bush was favored. On average, Kerry was preferred more than two to one.
-Bush supporters also have numerous misperceptions about Bush's international policy positions. Majorities incorrectly assume that Bush supports multilateral approaches to various international issues--the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the treaty banning land mines (72%)--and for addressing the problem of global warming: 51% incorrectly assume he favors US participation in the Kyoto treaty. After he denounced the International Criminal Court in the debates, the perception that he favored it dropped from 66%, but still 53% continue to believe that he favors it. An overwhelming 74% incorrectly assumes that he favors including
labor and environmental standards in trade agreements. In all these cases, majorities of Bush supporters favor the positions they impute to Bush.
-The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information," according to Steven Kull, "very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in
its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters--and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters."
I state the following as empirical truth: It is not possible to make a reasonable, logical, reality-based argument in support of the re-election of President Bush. It's impossible. That's why Bush supporters tend to TYPE IN CAPS!!!!, lie frequently, post pictures rather than data, beat circle-jerk topics like 'Cookiegate' to death, and are generally belligerent when discussing politics in the blogsphere.
David St. Hubbins
Proud member of the Reality Based Community
Source: http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/Report10_21_04.pdf
