Quote of the day: The Muslim world unites behind Hezbollah—while the U.S. far-right propaganda machine hums on at home, out-Orwelling Orwell
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Tide of Opinion TurnsTo Support for Hezbollah
Saudis and Egyptians, Originally Critical,
Now Stress Need for a Prompt Truce
—lead headline in this morning's New York Times
That's right, ladies and germs, you remember the shock of all those Arab expressions of disapproval of Hezbollah for provoking an unnecessary war? That's apparently all gone. (The demonstration pictured above is in Cairo—you know, where nasty things were being said about Hezbollah until just recently.)
"Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for 15 days," Neil MacFarquhar writes in the Times story, "the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements."
Even violently anti-Shiite Muslim groups like Al Qaeda have climbed aboard the Hezbollah bandwagon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah, far from being destroyed (although a good deal of southern Lebanon has been), appears poised to become a larger factor in the region than it has ever been.
It's understandable that Israel would have wished to destroy Hezbollah, but inexcusable that neither Israeli leaders nor whatever friends Israel has left in the world—perhaps you recall what Bob Herbert was saying the other day a true friend of Israel would have counseled—understood that they can't, and that in the process of trying they would unleash a reign of destruction that they will have great difficulty keeping from overwhelming themselves.
My, my, if you're a neocon psychopath making global policy from the reality-impervious world of the inner reaches of your twisted brain, the real world can be so—what's the word?—inconvenient.
ALSO TALKING—Paul Krugman ponders the never-ending right-wing rewrite of history
In his column today, "Reign of Error," jumping off from the shocking Harris poll we noted the other day, in which a full half of the respondents now say they believe that Iraq had WMDs, and 64 percent believe that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Al Qaeda, Krugman surveys some of the more notable recent achievements of "the propaganda machine that supports the current administration"—and the minimal efforts of the "major news organizations" to counter that propaganda.
"It's all very Orwellian," he concludes. "But when Orwell wrote of 'a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past,' he was thinking of totalitarian states. Who would have imagined that history would prove so easy to rewrite in a democratic nation with a free press?"
[As usual, in case the link doesn't work, the Krugman column is posted in a comment.]
posted by KenInNY @ 7:28 AM
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Here is the text of the Krugman column:
New York Times
July 28, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Reign of Error
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Amid everything else that’s going wrong in the world, here’s one more piece of depressing news: a few days ago the Harris Poll reported that 50 percent of Americans now believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when we invaded, up from 36 percent in February 2005. Meanwhile, 64 percent still believe that Saddam had strong links with Al Qaeda.
At one level, this shouldn’t be all that surprising. The people now running America never accept inconvenient truths. Long after facts they don’t like have been established, whether it’s the absence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons in the Whitewater affair or the absence of W.M.D. in Iraq, the propaganda machine that supports the current administration is still at work, seeking to flush those facts down the memory hole.
But it’s dismaying to realize that the machine remains so effective.
Here’s how the process works.
First, if the facts fail to support the administration position on an issue — stem cells, global warming, tax cuts, income inequality, Iraq — officials refuse to acknowledge the facts.
Sometimes the officials simply lie. “The tax cuts have made the tax code more progressive and reduced income inequality,” Edward Lazear, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, declared a couple of months ago. More often, however, they bob and weave.
Consider, for example, Condoleezza Rice’s response a few months ago, when pressed to explain why the administration always links the Iraq war to 9/11. She admitted that Saddam, “as far as we know, did not order Sept. 11, may not have even known of Sept. 11.” (Notice how her statement, while literally true, nonetheless seems to imply both that it’s still possible that Saddam ordered 9/11, and that he probably did know about it.) “But,” she went on, “that’s a very narrow definition of what caused Sept. 11.”
Meanwhile, apparatchiks in the media spread disinformation. It’s hard to imagine what the world looks like to the large number of Americans who get their news by watching Fox and listening to Rush Limbaugh, but I get a pretty good sense from my mailbag.
Many of my correspondents are living in a world in which the economy is better than it ever was under Bill Clinton, newly released documents show that Saddam really was in cahoots with Osama, and the discovery of some decayed 1980’s-vintage chemical munitions vindicates everything the administration said about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. (Hyping of the munitions find may partly explain why public belief that Saddam had W.M.D. has made a comeback.)
Some of my correspondents have even picked up on claims, mostly disseminated on right-wing blogs, that the Bush administration actually did a heck of a job after Katrina.
And what about the perceptions of those who get their news from sources that aren’t de facto branches of the Republican National Committee?
The climate of media intimidation that prevailed for several years after 9/11, which made news organizations very cautious about reporting facts that put the administration in a bad light, has abated. But it’s not entirely gone. Just a few months ago major news organizations were under fierce attack from the right over their supposed failure to report the “good news” from Iraq — and my sense is that this attack did lead to a temporary softening of news coverage, until the extent of the carnage became undeniable. And the conventions of he-said-she-said reporting, under which lies and truth get equal billing, continue to work in the administration’s favor.
Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Bush administration continues to be remarkably successful at rewriting history. For example, Mr. Bush has repeatedly suggested that the United States had to invade Iraq because Saddam wouldn’t let U.N. inspectors in. His most recent statement to that effect was only a few weeks ago. And he gets away with it. If there have been reports by major news organizations pointing out that that’s not at all what happened, I’ve missed them.
It’s all very Orwellian, of course. But when Orwell wrote of “a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past,” he was thinking of totalitarian states. Who would have imagined that history would prove so easy to rewrite in a democratic nation with a free press?
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
I really wish I didn't have to pay money to read Krugman. It's nice to read a sane man who at least appears to live in the same time and space as I do. I often wonder about the poor people who voted for Bush twice and STILL believe the economy is doing great and better than it ever did under Clinton while huddled in their little apartment somewhere with a few dollars in their pockets. I wonder if cognitive dissonance is ever going to happen for these people or not.
It was when I first found out the truth about the diamond trade that I first began to understand something fundemental to human nature. These last few years have shown the same is true for politics. Let me explain.
People keep wondering why the American public still believes these things.It helps to understand a little about human psychology. One thing humans hate more than anything is to be embarressed, especially in public. A good con man counts on this because once you've been conned the last thing you want to do is admit you were stupid enough or greedy enough to be fooled. These are two things that the con man also counts on. As long as the victim has anything he can hold on to that helps him believe he wasn't conned he will never admit he was.
The American people(some of them) were sold a bill of goods. They wanted to believe because it made sense to them according to the world the far right had made for them over the last thirty years.(Hillary's vast right wing conspiracy) Now that the truth is starting to come out it makes them very uncomfortable. They've buried their heads and refuse to look up. Some of them probably never will.
They're going to need our help. Be gentle, though. It won't be easy for them.
I teach my students the social psychological theory that people need to be seen as good and smart.
If you keep that in mind when you talk to them, it sometimes helps.
It also explains why it is so easy to lead folks astray. Christian extremism seems to be as good as one can get, according to the uneducated mind. And, the President and God are about as high authorities as you can get, therefore listening to them must make one smart.
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