How do we account for the continued strength of President Bush in the polls, relative to his presumptive Democratic opponent, despite the stream of bad news from Iraq? Much of the journalistic and intellectual establishment is plainly baffled ...and dismayed. The answer is not that complex: the public, unlike the class which defines itself as living the life of the mind, understands that we are at war, a war in which our very survival is at stake. This is a gut—level cognition.

Those who pride themselves on their ability to spin chains of logical reasoning, and sometimes arrive at a counter—intuitive conclusion, instinctively recoil from the obvious lesson, especially when it validates the positions of their political opponents. For them, the battle against the hated Bush is more important than the battle against Islamicist terror. Theories which blame the West as the source of all evil take precedence over actual evil, stariung them in the face.

It is a minority view. And the more often it appears, the stronger the reaction.

Mystery novelist and super—blogger Roger L. Simon  has come to the conclusion that the media are unwittingly helping Bush, by hyperventilating every time something bad happens, and reflexively blaming Bush. Here [slightly expurgated] is what he had to say:

Bush has a secret weapon... and it's the media. In their rapacious desire to unseat the President they are helping to elect him. This is especially true of big media sitting in New York, Washington and Los Angeles who, no real surprise here, continue to underestimate the American public. While they want to tie every misfortune to Bush, the public knows the bumper sticker truth, "S[tuff] happens." They also know this: In war, "S[tuff] happens almost always." So the media's zeal to pin everything on Bush, only flies back in their faces —— and improves Bush's image with the people by comparison.

Of course, this is true of the Democrats as well who are running an almost exclusively negative campaign, as if relying on another dumb media canard: "The Presidential campaign is always a referendum on the incumbent." Again, this assumes the American public is stupid. (Maybe the media and the Democrats are paying too much attention to the French.) Actually, the American public can be remarkably savvy. At the very last they want to know what a candidate stands for... duh! And they like it best when he stands for one thing. Bush, for the most part, stands for one thing. And as long as the media are against him, if I were a gambling man, I'd bet on him.

I couldn't agree more. About a month ago, I used the metaphor of driving in snow and losing traction:

The general public, especially the crucial swing voters, is learning to dismiss their news product as unreliably biased. Like a driver stuck in the snow, they are spinning their wheels. Instead of gaining traction, the faster they spin, the more the snow melts, and the less chance they have of getting out of their fix.

The question then is, will the media wake—up, and realize the error of their ways? Odds are no, they won't. To do so would require them to question their core beliefs about who they are, what justifies their social position, even their existence as a privileged group. If the spectacle of the World Trade Center towers falling didn't jar them from their fallacious assumptions, repeated failure in moving public opinion is unlikely to teach them a lesson.

Currently, the public is witnessing the media's willingness to endlessly publish photos of Abu Ghraib, despite the likelihood that it will harm our fighting men and women in Iraq. At the same time, the same media use restraint in dealing with the horrific video of the slaughter of Nick Berg. The double standard is obvious to anyone but an intellectual. People know that they will play the same role as Nick Berg, if we fail in our war on terror. Somehow, the media wish to evade this conclusion. This is not a useful response, in terms of their own goals.

Like the late Eighteenth Century French aristocrats dancing and dining at Versailles, the media elites party away, valuing only the opinions of those who have been invited to the ball. All others are dismissed as crude, hate—filled, stupid, uneducated, and unworthy, if not outright Nazis. Blissfully unaware that the American people actually care about winning the war we are in, they sneer in the faces of those they deem mere peasants. They are taking with them most of the Democratic Party, which has tragically embraced goal of winning the next election s more important than winning the way for national and cultural survival.

It is a defining moment.