It Was a Freakin' Intervention!

I was reading Lord Saletan's article

http://slate.msn.com/id/2107517/    

(he's actually been pretty right on lately!) this morning and a bolt of lightening struck me.  

Last nights debate was a freaking intervention!

For those of you not familiar with this particular use of the term, an "intervention" in the mental health world is a term that describes a group of loved ones gathering together to confront an addict about their addiction, their denial, and how that addiction is affecting each individual.

Saletan says:

Kerry offered a different way to judge the war's truth and worth: by the evidence. "I don't know if he sees what's really happened," Kerry said of Bush's Iraq spin. He worried that Bush was "not acknowledging what's on the ground. He's not acknowledging the realities of North Korea. He's not acknowledging the truth of the science of stem-cell research or of global warming and other issues."

I'm not quite sure where Saletan has been for the last year or so...but heh....if people get it BEFORE the election...so be it.

Bush, a non-recovering addict, is selling denial as his only solution to what's really happening in this country and abroad.  He should know how to do this quite well as for addicts, denial is a major tool in the arsenal of maintaining comfort in the face of immense internal conflicts and pressures.

Kerry, OTOH, was forceful in demonstrating that there is a truth which must be faced.  The informed citizenry were watching...hoping....for an explosion of denial.  Juxtaposed against the backdrop of yesterday's Iraq tragedies, Kerry's truth telling made it ever more difficult to deny.  

The more Bush denied, the sillier he looked.  Now I realize I'm hardly a neutral observer.  But Bush's performance had some of the air of Nixon as his words moved ever further away from the clear and apparent reality.  

Let's hope this is a large step forward in a trend and that the voting public continue to move toward reality and not a retreat to their own propensities toward denial.