The One With Aldacron

When asked by my Korean friends and students, I’ve often been stumped in trying to come up with an explanation of why Bush was granted a second term in 2004. I can list a number of factors that I think apply, but a new Salon article sums it up much better than I ever have:

So anything short of a major GOP defeat will raise serious questions
not just about the American people’s political beliefs but their
sentience and even their species. It is true that certain animals have
been known to engage in self-destructive behavior,
but a Republican victory in the midterms would go well beyond all
previously recorded examples and could force scientists to consider the
possibility that many apparent humans in North America are, in reality,
disguised ferns or other biological anomalies.

Since that is unlikely, a Democratic landslide would seem to be all
but certain. But there’s one little problem: the 2004 election, an
event that cast more doubt on the theory of evolution than a million
Bible-thumping sermons.

Just two years ago, Americans went dutifully to the polls, closed
the curtains, and in the sacred privacy of the booth voted for … four
more years of the same idiot who had already surpassed such luminaries
as Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding to establish
himself as the biggest dodo ever to sit in the Oval Office.

If they did it once, could they do it again? Even though these are the
midterms, and Bush is on the ballot only symbolically, the possibility
seems insane. But it seemed insane two years ago, too.

Let’s hope enough Americans have a firmer grasp of reality this time around.

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