Attack of the Drones!!!

Last week, country singers Tim McGraw and Faith Hill publicly bashed the Bush administration at a high-profile press conference over its ineffectual handling of Hurricane Katrina in their respective home states of Louisiana and Mississippi, before, during, and after the disaster. Their tongue-lashings were aggressive without being hostile or militantly disrespectful, certainly nothing that rational people of either political persuasion could take umbrage with. Still, bearing in mind that the Dixie Chicks' commercial music careers ended when they slammed Bush three years ago, I couldn't resist logging onto an online chatroom addressing the McGraw-Hill dissent the following day.

I can't say what I ran into was shocking, but it certainly helped me remember than more than one out of every three Americans still supports George Bush. Despite the shocking incompetence on display for everyone in regards to disaster relief, evacuation, and the current unacceptably slow pace of cleanup, approximately half of the posters on this message board found NOTHING to fault the Bush administration for. The only contempt these posters (in the dozens if not hundreds) held was for McGraw and Hill for stating their informed opinions.

Intelligent Bush voters had the sense to distance themselves from their leader months ago, so the caliber of intellectualism coming from the keyboards of these purple Kool-Aid swilling Bush-bots was predictably unremarkable. Basically, the critiques followed a variation on two or three formulas: "Shut up and sing you illiterate hayseed hicks!"; "If you two think you could do better, go down there and lift a finger yourselves!" (uh, they have been...for months...that's why they can give a first-person account on how badly things are going); "Don't blame Bush, blame the Democratic Mayor and Democratic Governor for FEMA's inability to find LA or MS on a map on the short side of a week!!!"; and my personal favorite, "The lazy scum should get off of their asses and rebuild their own city!" The latter is particularly amusing considering that the Gulf Coast is, or rather was, teeming with trailer-park Republicans who were probably counting on their fellow "red state" brethren to have their back if they ever needed it. I guess there's no such thing as solidarity on Planet Republican, particularly if it could potentially cost a fellow Republican a few more tax dollars or if it pressures them to disagree with the Almighty Bush.

Clinton had some pretty flaky loyalists with a permanent schoolgirl crush on him, but even his staunchest defenders were able to occasionally find fault with the man over a given policy, public statement, or decision. Similarly, most Democratic partisans acknowledge that Louisiana's Democratic Governor and New Orleans' Democratic Mayor dropped the ball on their end of managing Katrina almost as badly as the Bush administration did on theirs. But it seems as though at least a third of Americans have no such nuance when it comes to George Bush. They seem to believe the man is incapable of making a wrong decision, either because of the (R) next to his name or the fact that he "has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ" as they do.

Whatever the justification for their lockstep loyalty, the scariest thing the "Bush drones" articulate about our society is how vulnerable tens of millions of people to becoming disciples. In all seriousness, the breathlessness and teeth-clenching ferocity that Bush's loyalists but into defending his every decision reminds me of the passion that Branch Dividian cult members put on display for the world back in 1993. When cult leader David Koresh decided for his group that mass suicide was a preferable alternative to handing over their illegal firearms to the Feds, the "true believers" ran into the flaming complex so they could be incinerated along with their leader. I am convinced that at least a third of the country is dangerously close to that level of robotic allegiance to George Bush.