The 2004 election results, which by a tiny majority will allow George Bush to remain in the White House, are evidence that that the war on knowledge and thinking has escalated.
Rather than elect someone who was familiar with, and understood the issues, 51% of the public went for the candidate with strong beliefs. Strong beliefs and faith are important and may help people get through troubled times, but they don't pay the bills nor solve the nation's problems.
As John Kerry said, just because George Bush says something is so doesn't make it so. But the people in the middle of the country are willing to accept that it is so. One only has to look at the results of an University of Maryland survey which showed that many conservatives believe that Iraq had WMDs, the world is behind Bush and that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks.
None of those statements were true, but was unimportant to the "Value Voters." To them, understanding more than one side of an issue is either unimportant, unnecessary or just plain wrong. One wonders how they survive in business.
Can one imagine what would have happened to Microsoft if it had kept to the belief that the Internet was not going to be that important. Instead they evaluated the data and changed their ways, an approach that is anathema to the right. To the value voters, there is only one way and that way is always right, even if it is wrong.
After the election, one person asked "how bad do things have to get." Apparently pretty bad.
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