The Garden of Ignoble Ignorance

"When ignorance gets started, it knows no bounds." - Will Rogers

Fifteen days. The countdown began almost immediately after his reelection, of course, but has grown only more insistent in the years, months and days since. In fifteen days, George W. Bush will no longer be President of the United States, leader of the free world or, in any conceivable way, capable of impacting policy or progress from this point forward. Americans, many gleefully report, will finally be free of him. Free of him, perhaps, but free of ourselves?

Debates rage about just how awful the Bush presidency has been, as a nation consumed by list-making argues about just where to squeeze W. Between Harding and Pierce? Below Nixon and Buchanan? While there are certainly worse pastimes (The Real Housewives of just about anywhere, for example), most Americans (myself included) don't know enough about American presidential history to accurately assess such a ranking. (Sad, since immigrants seeking legalization are required to recite American history as part of an oral exam few "natural" citizens could pass.) What qualifies someone or something as "best" or "worst"? There are legitimate standards to be applied, but in the end, don't we all come to such blunt conclusions based on a subtle assessment of our "gut instincts"? We do when unchallenged to do otherwise - the real Bush legacy.

It takes human beings all of two seconds to make a "snap" judgment about a new person or situation (time enough for W. to wink and come off as the born-again Christian with whom most Americans wanted to have a beer); thankfully, human beings possess the capacity to use that "snap" as information with which to move forward, continuing to assess and reassess as more information becomes available. Bush survived into a second term precisely because in his instance, and, at his insistence, additional information was neither forthcoming, nor valued.

Americans did not give Bush a second look - they were either horrified by his mismanglement of the English language and wrote him off, or they were enchanted by his folksy, no-nonsense style and followed him blindly toward the promised land. Only well into his second, disastrous term, when the mendacity in the run up to the Iraq war became impossible to ignore and the economy entered a free-fall affecting Wall & Main street (let's forever retire this phrase, heretofore), did the American people take a second, harder look and wholeheartedly reject everything they saw. His disapproval ratings have made history, further bolstering the raging debate as to whether he is our nation's worst president. He will leave office two weeks hence with the lowest American support of any U.S. president since such polling began. But before we rejoice, happy at his constitutionally-dictated end, we should pause and consider this: How did he, and we, get here?

Bush ushered in an era of ignorance, prideful in its rejection of critical thinking and questioning status quo and hateful in its degradation of experience and higher education, turning these things into "elitism," something somehow more distasteful than violating the international rules of law. For this, he should be roundly criticized, harshly judged and never missed. But, the fault does not lie solely at his cowboy boots. We Americans bought it - hook, line and stinker!

The so-called "elites" ignored Bush, certain he'd become a one-term, Supreme Court-appointed do-nothing, mocking his syntax and simian stylings and thusly playing their elitist parts to perfection. The so-called "real Americans" adored Bush, certain he provided the strong leadership our uncertain times (9/11, global terror, the impending End of Days, natch) required. Whatever side our snap judgments took us to, none of us (or at least most certainly not enough of us) sought more information or gave value to the information available to us. We allowed those snap judgments to thrive and bloom in a garden of ignoble ignorance, planted by Bush and continually watered by us. While American men and women died in combat, lost their jobs and homes, gave away constitutional rights to an overreaching government and allowed their representatives to sanction state torture, we did nothing but count the days until we'd be free of him.

Well, we're almost free of him. Aren't we lucky?