WHY HE LOST 49 STATES: In today's
Wall Street Journal, former senator and Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern unknowingly demonstrates the same detachment from reality and lack of perspective which led a majority of voters in 49 states to give him the finger in 1972.
In this maniacally self-centered screed, George seems less troubled by the murder of thousands of his fellow Americans on September 11 and the ongoing threat our country still faces than he is about being inconvenienced by stricter airport security and, oddly enough, the encroachment of technology. Get a load of these excerpts:
"The computer has become a new weapon of mass destruction to overrule our minds and our common sense. Did I tell you that I am terrified by computers, e-mail and the Internet? The only things worse are automated telephones that tell you to press numbers 1 through 99 and then inform you that the item you want is no longer in stock. Civilization is crumbling before these awful gadgets--although my grandsons are threatening to show me that they are not any more dangerous than the atomic bomb or AIDS."
This pile of Luddite manure has me wondering if one of George McGovern's many post-1972 jobs was ghostwriting for UNABOMBER Ted Kaczynski.
McGovern saves his lowest remark for last: "I'll probably yield to the computer age eventually despite my strong instincts against it. But deep inside I'll never yield to the airport terrorism that President Bush has imposed on us as his answer to Osama bin Laden."
I don't agree with all the airport security policies adopted after September 11, but for McGovern to label those policies as "terrorism" perpetrated by President Bush is so beyond reason that I'm surprised the Journal published it. If tighter security at American airports qualifies as "terrorism" in McGovern's World, what label does he reserve for the July 4 suicide attack at the Los Angeles airport in which two people were murdered? What does he call the domestic hijacking of four airliners to slaughter over 3,000 Americans?
Deeming as "terrorism" something relatively trivial such as logistical inconveniences is an egregious insult to the memory of the innocent people murdered by terrorists. Only a self-absorbed, anti-American, counterculture asshole such as George McGovern would think otherwise.
