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Notebook Entries, July 2003

Notebook entry, July 22, 2003

I am done with the first draft of my latest essay. It is a whopping 23,000 words. I am in the begining stages of editing the work now, and I most likely will chop off about 3000 or so of those words. It is a little rough in its lineal thoughts, but I will do my best to straighten it out. It has to do with Beta males and their impact on the American political scene. 25 years ago, conservatives called them Dixiecrats, and MARs -- Middle American Radicals. To me, there are just blue collar workers, like yours truly.

Notebook entry, July 10, 2003

An interesting article has appeared in Salon.com today combining innate emotions and politics. It is not very deep, but it represents, at least, that I can recall, one of the first article bearing these two elements. The title of the piece: A Nation of Scared Sheep, by Louise Witt. Here is the sub title: Why don't Americans care that Bush may have lied to them about Iraq? The answer lies deep in our reptilian brain. The article is headed by a cartoon map of the United States with five human characters crouched on the map's surface -- they all have their heads below the surface.

"People don't focus as much on the sin as on the sinner," says Robert P. Lawry, a professor of law and the director of the Center for Professional Ethics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in Cleveland. "Bush's popularity explains the shrugging of the shoulders. An awful lot of people seem to have a visceral, negative reaction to Martha Stewart; they don't like her. They like Bush, so they forgive him. It has nothing to do with the lie. Going to war is much more problematic a lie than one that nets you a small gain, relatively speaking, in the stock market. People are not paying attention to the implications and importance of the lie."

Lawry surmises people base their likes and dislikes on fairly superficial assessments: They see Martha as an uppity bitch and George W. as a regular guy. Yet, there are deeper, more complicated reasons why Americans are forgiving Bush -- and it has nothing to do with his magnetic personality and far more with the times we live in.

We're scared. "

The article then moves into the "since 9/11" mode and cites various experts about this situation or that. I have left the link to the article below, but I don't know if you can gain access. You may have to pay a fee, join to subscribe, and then search the archives, but here is the url address.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/07/09/lying/

Notebook entry, July 08, 2003

Work is still continuing on the essay concerning Beta males. It is over 16,000 words and counting. I do have to admit that it slow going at this stage because there is an impending wedding in our family. My step-daughter is officially marrying her English husband -- there were married last year in a county court -- long story, but the short of it is this: Many relatives arriving from England and across the U.S. makes our household a bit on edge and I think that it is effecting my writing. I'll be on vacation starting the 14th, and hopefully with the daily stress of the job out of way, perhaps I'll be able to devote and hour or two each morning to the effort and finish this monster. The optimum word here is Hopefully.