Reductionist Sloganeering

I love a good Bush joke as much as the next, but as Mailer (I am normally not one to approve of much that Mailer says) argues in the article posted by Astro, this tendency to decry Bush and co.'s stupidity and/or hillarity is starting to piss me off to no end. Would we be happier if Bush actually got A's at Yale, or for that matter, gained the presidency and any success he's had in life through his own hard work? Would it make you feel any better if Bush didn't stick his foot in his mouth every other day, or knew the capitols of very African nation? No . . . and/or yes. This is precisely the problem, the policies of this administration, and the broader processes it exemplifies (capitalism, imperialism, fundamentalism) are not the result of idiotic thinking on the part of one individual or even a group, but of an organized and sophisticated legion of millions. In this way, as Mailer and Naomi Klein (in an excellent Nation column last week; on a side note, she's really starting to come into her own and becoming the one saving grace of their problematic columnists, Pollitt aside) argued recently, the left's reduction to bland and increasingly unoriginal sloganeering simply reifies the problems associated with this administration's (and most of Clinton's as well) policies and the above mentioned global systems and ideologies. Here though, we come to a quandary-as much as I'm getting sick of this skin deep analysis and these retreaded protest cries, I wonder to what extent the broadly defined left (I know, there is no such thing, but labels are so hard to come by, especially after a couple beers) would have either the cultural, or monetary (think MoveOn here) support that it does if it actually addressed the problems instead of their personification. That is to say, would millions have gone to Fahrenheit 9/11, donated to Dean or MoveOn, funded left Dem groups etc. if the left actually attacked the capitalism and imperialism that Bush is simply a representative of? Would Upper West Side liberals (liberal in a very nineteenth-century way) have as much a problem with this man and administration if they simply looked more like the cold warriors of days past (think same class as Bush, only better manners and better grades at Yale)? If they didn't invoke God so much and instead based their actions on "logic?" What about if they had convinced more people that their true purpose was the liberation of Iraq? Would this make their actions any better? Hopefully not, but unfortunately, I'm starting to believe the right-wing talk radio hype--much of the vocal (or more to the point, the opposition that writes tee-shirts, New Yorker articles, plans rallies and appears in the regular and everyday left (Nation, Village Voice, even Air America, God bless'm media) opposition to Bush, comes from an elitist group of the coastal bourgeoise-it's how they fought the war, not the war, it's how they run the economy, not American-style capital, it's their overriding belief in the Bible, not their anti-modern religiosity (common not just to Christians, but many others alike). In the end, it seems that many do really want this adminnistration out of power because of its stupidity and backwardness. What a shame.