This is a fantastic article from Salon. It shines a glaring spotlight on the intellectual crisis in US politics so lamented by Al Gore and others on the side of Reason.
It’s such well-written I’m not sure exactly what to quote from it - pretty much the whole thing, but for those too lazy to just click on the link, here are “a few” hi-lites:
[quote=“George Bush”]June 11, 2007 | “There’s no doubt in my mind that each person who has been executed in our state was guilty of the crime committed.” – George W. Bush, June 2, 2000
“There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a grave and gathering threat to America and the world.” – GWB, Jan. 28, 2004
“There is no doubt in my mind that this country cannot [sic] achieve any objective we put our mind to.” – GWB, April 20, 2004
“There’s no doubt in my mind we made the right decision in Iraq.” – GWB, Sept. 2, 2004
“There’s no doubt in my mind that Afghanistan will remain a democracy and serve as an incredible example.” – GWB, Jan. 5, 2006
“There’s no doubt in my mind [warrantless surveillance] is legal.” – GWB, Jan. 26, 2006 [/quote]
VS...
[quote]Forty-five years ago today, JFK, speaking to the graduating class at Yale, said, “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic … Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” He urged the students to “move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality.” Kennedy was urging the students not to let the establishment, which he represented, get away with anything. Submit its rhetoric to the fiercest scrutiny. Think for yourself. It was an invitation that reflected his own education, two years earlier, in the wisdom of doubt…
…Let’s face it, George Bush doesn’t have to doubt himself, any more than Donald Trump or Tom Cruise or Mitt Romney do. We live in a culture where they will never be forced to examine their prejudices or flaws. Of course, they have been denied the true confidence of people who are brave enough to face their doubts and who know there are worse things than feeling insecure. Like, say, feeling too secure. Pumped up by steroidic pseudo-confidence and anesthetized by doubt-free sentimentality, they are incapable of feeling anything authentic and experiencing the world. But that hasn’t stopped them, and won’t stop others, from succeeding in a society that is more enamored of a non-reality-based conception of leadership than previous generations were.
JFK’s generation had been warned by FDR about the corrosive peril of fear, and they took the admonishment to heart. But imagine if they had approached their moment in history with the grandiose self-image with which we’ve approached ours. Without the wisdom of doubt, without the grace of humility and the simple ability to learn from mistakes, would anyone have called them the Greatest Generation? (And by the way, don’t we do them a disservice with that moniker – didn’t they fight against all things “greatest” and on the side of splendid imperfection?) Imagine what the world would look like if they’d had the disdain for humility we do, if they’d relied on a conception of themselves as innately good, if they’d allowed themselves to think they knew everything and therefore learned nothing.
But our generation has erected a culture that confuses happiness with a lack of discomfort, and leadership with an almost psychotic form of false optimism. We have ingeniously insulated ourselves from self-scrutiny and fear. We tuck ourselves away in gated communities, hibernate in food courts, or sleep in front of televisions, swathed in layer upon layer of soft and soporific comfort to protect ourselves from the bracing draft of doubt. We can barely feel our own culture anymore.
Our pretend fearlessness has made us timid. Some of our filmmakers, the Michael Bays and Brett Ratners, make movies as if they’re embarrassed by stories, and some of our singers, especially those of the emo variety, sing as if they’re embarrassed by melody. Most of us are getting our information from only a few sources, and it’s infused with narcotic banality: pillow-embroidery sentiment and locker room aphorisms that induce the waking sleep of consumerism. We’ve been convinced that good things go to people who “want it more than the other guy,” that wealth is a reward, and poverty a penalty. That the highest compliment we can pay each other is, we know what we want and how to get it, which makes us sound brave. But by banishing doubt we have cultivated fear. We’ve stopped looking under the bed for monsters. The good books and songs and movies…have to fight through layer upon layer of swaddling to get to us. [/quote]