Pro-Bush
Pro-McCain
Not Enough Sense To Come In Out Of The Rain

So I'm a fan of analogical thinking. Not exclusively, nor disproportionately, but as a supplementary reasoning strategy.

And so I've been thinking about the folks--pundits, second-string pundits, would-be pundits, bloggers, plumbers, optometrists and suchlike--who (a) insisted that Bush would be a good President and (b) now insist that McCain would be a good President. And I was also reflecting on the fact that these same people overwhelmingly tend to (c) continue to insist that Bush has been a good President.

Now, predicting who will and who won't be a good President is a non-trivial matter, and, at least in some cases, people can be forgiven for getting it wrong. (It wasn't difficult in the case of George W. Bush--but let's ignore that for the time being. I'm more interested in the fact that, to this day they fail to recognize the world-historical awfulness of his presidency.)

So, imagine that we chose meteorologists like we choose "pundits." No degrees or certifications required...in fact, no credentialing process whatsoever. And imagine that a a certain set of these meteorologists had a strong emotional commitment to the claim that it always rains on, oh, Monday, but it never rains on Tuesday. They assured us last week that it would not rain on Tuesday, and they assured us the week before that, and so forth, and they just keep getting it wrong. That would be bad enough, of course...but imagine that this week it'svery important to get it right, and that they are insisting at the tops of their lungs that it will (again) be fair and non-rainy Tuesday. But we are standing outside, on Monday, in the very downpour that they assured us would not happen. We point out to them that they are notoriously bad at this, that they don't seem to take actual evidence into account but, instead, predict on the basis of their antecdent commitments, and that, in particular, they had sworn up and down that we'd have nice weather today, which we do not.

Looking up at the black sky, looking around at the sheets of rain deluging us, looking back at us, soaked to the bone they respond: "What are you talking about? The weather's beautiful."

The pro-McCain conservatives are, of course, like our imagined meteorologists. Not only do they get all their predictions wrong, they don't see/can't understand/won't admit (in a huge tangle of blindness and intellectual dishonesty) that the current president, the one they predicted greatness for, has turned out to be a complete disaster.

Getting a prediction of the future wrong is one thing; being unable to tell the difference between one outcome and the other here and now, post facto is a whole other level of cluelessness.If we're standing in a downpour and you're assuring me that it's sunny, I'm just done taking your advice about the weather seriously.

So here's a plea to the remaining pro-Bush pro-McCain punditocracy: just shut up. Seriously. You've been as wrong at it's possibly for people like you to be. And you're either too clueless or too dishonest to either see or admit that. And although that doesn't seem to have in any way diminished your self-confidence, nobody with the sense that God gave a goose is listening to you anymore. Your pro-McCain sophistries and fulminations are falling on deaf ears.

You've lost the right to be taken seriously.

You all may not have the sense to come in out of the rain, but that just means that those of us who do have the sense are done listening to your worthless opinions.