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(cross posted at LeftinLowell)
One sure sign that the village is about to ignore reality is when it asserts anything about the desires of Americans. As Greenwald pointed out today:
One of the most common and most corrosive aspects of our political discourse is the endless assertions -- based on nothing -- about what "Americans believe. It is exceedingly conventional wisdom that Americans generally view the world through the prism of Jack Bauer and therefore want our government to torture, want Guantanamo kept opened, and do not want suspected Terrorists to be tried in civilian courts inside the U.S. It is even more commonly asserted that Americans do not want, and even further, would never tolerate, criminal investigations into the various crimes of Bush officials."
Turns out that there is polling on these questions, and the American people seem to have missed the memo from the village about what they are supposed to believe. Of course the polling is phrased to try and push them toward village conformity, but alas the village is doomed to be disapointed (that is if they really cared if their claims about American opinion had any basis in truth).
Greenwald has the details but here are some hits:
By a wide margin -- 58-40% -- Americans say that torture should never be used, no matter the circumstances.
...a majority of Americans (50-47%) believe that the Obama administration should investigate whether the Bush administration's treatment of detainees was illegal.
Americans would have opposed (52-42%) the issuance of pardons by Bush to those "who carried out his administration's policy on the treatment of terrorism suspects."
I guess it turns out that Americans get, unlike Fox, that Jack Bauer is as advertised... entertaining fiction. Of course the village will no doubt go on misunderestimating American opinion. They will claim insight into 'conventional wisdom' and assert that these majority views are actually only the opinion of the far left.
One can hope now that those who dismissed anyone that was 'reality based' are out of office, real reality might begin permeate the consciousness (and conscience) of the village.
