The end of the world?

I understand that Bush is leaving office with a 22% positive rating. Dick the Slimy is leaving with a 13% positive rating. Those have to be records for the absolutely worst President and Vice-President ever. The eight years of Bush/Cheney have been a nightmare. Two lost wars, an economy in freefall, terrible unemployment, an unprecedented national debt, a probable depression, a failed war on drugs, Katrina, and, in fact, failure as far as the eye can see. They have not one positive thing to have done for either the nation or its ordinary citizens.

And yet, here in our little town, we overhear daily expressions of fear. Many people here are convinced that things are going to be terrible under the new administration. That everything is going to fail and, to listen to some, it is indeed almost the end of the world. I confess to be at a loss to understand this. These are not people who are among the obscenely rich that have benefitted from the Bush/Cheney rape of the taxpayers. They are for the most part just ordinary people who work for a living, farming, logging, teaching, etc. Of course they are all Republicans so I guess part of their fear is simply of democrats. Democrats, they seem to believe, are going to take away their guns, convert our nation into a socialist state (or even worse, communism), allow gays to marry, actively promote abortion, and on and on. In short, they are ignorant people who basically know nothing they haven't heard from their idols Rush, Hannity, and such. Much of it is just plain racism. If you listen you just hear nigger this and nigger that and so on. I find it quite incredible. We have just had eight years during which time their own class has been under siege, wages have declined, people have lost their savings and pensions, out military has been savaged, our veterans neglected, our unions busted, and more and more people without health insurance or jobs. In spite of this they seem to think things will get worse under Obama. Not just worse, disastrously worse. And many of these same people expressed dissatisfaction with Bush/Cheney and I know some of them refused to vote at all. I am at a loss to explain this. I do think that if they had their way it would truly be the end of the world. This represents a level of ignorance so abysmal I think it might be characterized as pathological (I don't know if there is such a concept as pathological ignorance but there ought to be).

LKBIQ:
I have never found, in a long experience of politics, that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.
Harold Macmillan

TILT:
Playing cards were known in China as early as the 9th century.