Dean and the Leukocytes

A well-known scifi author whose name I have forgotten had an idea about the similarities between society and the human blood system.

He surmised that society could be viewed as a macrocosm of the human blood system, with different citizens unconsciously filling necessary roles for the health of the system as whole. Most people provide structure until there is some threat to the system. When there is a threat to the blood system, some regular red cells metamorph into white blood cells to combat the menace. The author supposed that the same could be seen in the case of a threat to a general society.

If Bush is seen as a menace to America, as most posters here would agree, then maybe the Dean phenomenon can be viewed as a natural response to stimulus.

While you could try to make a case that the rise of the evangelical Right is an exhibition of the same type of response, in reaction to the stimulus of a perceived secular threat to their idea of what American society should be, I would counter that the non-rogue societal leukocyte reacts to threats to the viability of the whole society. In the case of the biblical Right and the whole pro-Bush movement, my opinion is that the leadership of the Republican Party has figured out how to manufacture threats to activate people against GOP adversaries, by which I mean that the Bushies are gaming the system for their own benefit. They combine the threat of the other ("Islamofascists") with the threat of the inner ("liberals") to isolate their base from outside discordant information, thus maintaining their hold on these people despite extensive evidence that Bush is a poor leader, untrustworthy liar, and crook in the crony capitalist vein.

:)