Tucked away in the update to a Glenn Greenwald post:

Dick Morris revealingly predicted that revelation of this [foiled London airplane] plot would give the President a 10-point bounce in the polls, yet he received almost no boost at all.

By golly, he’s right. Mid-thirties and falling.

In addition to causing people to take the terrorism threat less seriously, playing political games with these threats also causes people to be far more skeptical of their government’s statements regarding terrorism. It’s the classic Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome, and in the terrorism context, that can be a very dangerous problem.

Someone once asked me, “What would you do about terrorism?” My answer: “In very general terms, I would a) try to solve the problem, and b) try to avoid scaring people unnecessarily.” That’s what I think a responsible leader would do. Bush has done the exact opposite on both counts.

It seems Bush has acquired a taste for existentialism.

US President George W. Bush quoted French existential writer Albert Camus to European leaders a year and a half ago, and now he’s read one of his most famous works: “The Stranger.”

It’s been one of my favourite books ever since I first read it — at age eighteen. I even tormented my patient bow-tied French professor with that Cure song, as we all do.

What would Bush be getting out of this book, besides killing Arabs? I imagine Mr Bush, with his approval ratings stuck at 40 and under for months, must be feeling sad and misunderstood. A bit like a morose Mersault. The world seems absurd — after all he’s done for world peace and safety, how could his own countrymen and party turn against him?

And the bit about Mersault not feeling sad when his mother dies — perhaps that resonated.

And compare Camus:

Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.

with Bush:

Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: “History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.”

There’s a faint whiff of existentialist angst. Very faint.

Or maybe I’m reading too much in, and it’s more like wilbur envisions.

Anyhow, he’s now finished ‘L’etranger’. Next he can read ‘The Plague’.

I had occasion for a chat with the Priest last Sunday. I enjoy these chats, but I think he’s having trouble accepting my new-found lack of faith.

“It’s very simple,” I said. “I used to think feelings and experiences were good evidence for my beliefs, and now I realise that those things are not sufficient to establish the truth of an idea.”

He stopped and considered for a moment. He seemed like a doctor trying to ask the right question to find the source of the disease.

“Are you reading the scriptures?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Although I will sometimes cite one on a blog post. And I’m just as familiar with their contents as ever, But reading them by course, no.”

“Do you pray?”

“Nope.”

He then asked, “How are you supposed to get an answer if you won’t do what you need to build your faith?”

Keep in mind that in the Mormon view, great emphasis is placed on the need to pray and receive a personal witness of the truthfulness of God’s existence and other religious principles. But notice what’s implicit in the Priest’s view. The idea is that faith has to be nurtured in order for it to grow. It’s not enough to just read the ‘theory’ (if I can use that term to mean ‘a belief system’). You have to keep working it. Like a leaky balloon, you have to keep pumping it up. Keep reading, keep praying, keep thinking right, keep living by the rules, so that the theory will seem ‘truer’. If you don’t do this, the theory may seem less believable, and you may not believe it anymore and abandon it entirely.

By contrast, consider a principle that is as true as anything can be in science. Let’s say gravitation. We can do thousands of experiments with gravity. We have theories about what gravity is and how it works. The theories can be tested against observable facts. And so by now the theory is pretty solid, though it may get modified if we need. As a result, nobody gets very excited about it. No one says you need to keep reading about gravity or studying about it or talking to scientists in order to keep believing in it. There are no meetings at the Church of Gravity. Instead, you find it to be a more or less fitting account of what happens (or you don’t, in which you get to work on a better theory).

There are goods and bads with the scientific method. The bad side is that the prevailing theory could be changed if more facts come to light, so what you think now could be wrong. The good side is that you have reasons for your ideas that you can show people and have them verify. You can go to the wall for an idea, and say, “Given what we know, this is the best theory available.” Faith needs continual propping up because there’s nothing behind it. Without support, it falls over easily, and you have to imagine that it’s standing up by itself. And this kind of self-deception is difficult for a halfway aware person to keep up without feeling a good deal of cognitive dissonance.

“I don’t think you understand,” I said. “If I read the scriptures and prayed, and then had a big religious experience, it would prove nothing. It would show that I had a feeling. People have all kinds of feelings, like what kind of ice cream to have, or to drown their children one by one in the bathtub. But that doesn’t mean they’re good ideas. If a phenomenon is valid, it’ll be backed up by facts. Not feelings.”

Now what if I had said yes to both the Priest’s questions about reading and praying? What would he have said then? Well, he could have asked more. Are you attending your meetings? Sure. Living the Word of Wisdom? Yes. Being honest with people? I think so.

Paying tithing? No. Well, then there’s your problem right there!

I’m not saying these are bad things to do (except tithing — I hope no religion ever gets any of my money ever again). But in my particular strain of Christianity there were so many things to do that you could never really do them all, and any missing pieces could be cited to show that one’s faith needs to be worked on. This is convenient for the Priest because in this view, lack of results never means the belief system has failed. The adherent just needs to work harder at it. Such is the leaky balloon of faith.

It appears that some 30 percent of Americans couldn’t name the year of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a recent poll, summarised here.

And five percent couldn’t name the date.

This must represent some kind of floor for poll questions. They’re the ones who would answer ‘yes’ to the ‘Do you drink paint?’ question.

I was going to say that these are the people who determine elections, except they’re probably not awake enough to vote. But seeing how clueless voters can be, I wonder…

Hat tip to Billmon.

There’s a new blog in town by the ubiquitous and always down-to-earth Jeff, and it’s called Soma Vacation.

I’m still trying to figure out what sense of ‘soma’ is intended. While I’m doing that, why don’t you have a browse and a comment or two?

This is the 200th post on Good Reason. Somehow I found that many things to write about. I must be pretty opinionated.

I’ve decided to make every 100th post an Open Thread. Instead of like Eschaton, where every other thread is an Open Thread.

Chat away amongst yourselves.

A quick rundown.

One possible headline in the wake of the Lieberman senate loss:

“Left-Wing Nutjobs Have Taken Over the Democratic Party, Say Right-Wing Nutjobs”

It’s terrible how divided the Democratic Party is, isn’t it? Nice of those Republicans to be thinking of us. And they would know divided. They’re pretty busy fleeing their radioactive president.

In other news, Dick Cheney has thought of a new thing that emboldens terrorists: voting against Joe Lieberman.

And as I look at what happened yesterday, it strikes me that it’s a perhaps unfortunate and significant development from the standpoint of the Democratic Party, that what it says about the direction the party appears to be heading in when they, in effect, purge a man like Joe Lieberman, who was just six years ago their nominee for Vice President, is of concern, especially over the issue of Joe’s support with respect to national efforts in the global war on terror.

The thing that’s partly disturbing about it is the fact that, the standpoint of our adversaries, if you will, in this conflict, and the al Qaeda types, they clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task.

Add that to the list of things that Dick Cheney thinks embolden terrorists:

• Withdrawing from Iraq
• Not voting for Dick Cheney
• Thinking that in pictures, he looks like he’s about to go for your neck.

And for comparison, here’s the list of things that terrorists, strangely, don’t seem to get very excited about:

• Americans being frightened by meaningless colour-coded terror alerts
• Invading (say) the wrong country
• Shooting people in the face
• The complete dismantlement of American values by its leadership

Meanwhile, an article from the Guardian:

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted this week found the president’s approval rating has dropped to 33 percent, matching his low in May. His handling of nearly every issue, from the Iraq war to foreign policy, contributed to the president’s decline around the nation, even in the Republican-friendly South.

Maybe my prediction of 25% in August will come true. Nah, the new terrorist attack will have the biggest fraidy-cats approving, so that’s gotta come up. Still. Could happen. Eh?

Eh?