The semedi blog raises a good point -- one I've seen nowhere else: Why does the right-wing castigate Newsweek for using an unnamed source while defending Novak's use of an unnamed source in the Valerie Plame case?
It's a simple question. Anyone have an answer?
4 comments:
Let's go ask McClellan - I'm sure he can think of a doozy on the spot!
Concerning "why..."
The horrid thing is, many probably don't know they're doing it. They're being triggered in a way that lets them be perfectly serious...just like the "good Germans"...and perfectly one-sided. Fair play just doesn't enter into it.
BushRove and the neocons (and other demagogues like our possible next president Schwarzenegger)are reaching people on a level that's infantile, or at least childish, where reason and common sense don't work. The level of "I wannit, I wannit."
At that level there's no rhyme nor reason. You just want what you want, and the other guy gets nothing. Or reviled and marginalized, like liberals. Or killed, like Iraqis, not to mention our sons and daughters in uniform.
Problem is, how do we budge America the Beautiful off that level and back to something approximating real thought? In TVland it won't be easy...
oh, the contradiction's even greater than that!
they blast newsweek for using unnamed sources while defending novak for using unnamed sources WHILE THREATENING TO IMPRISON REPORTERS FOR NOT NAMING THEIR SOURCES!
i do think my head will just blow up.
and that may be the key: the american people won't actually allow such cognitive dissonance, so they just walk away, content that their fearless leader will sort it all out for them.
and what will it take to get them to apply the necessary energy to think for themselves?
a crashed economy, for starters. and this is so serious and so imminent, it will make the 30s look like a lavish picnic (remember, at the time of that crash, over 90 percent of the population lived on farms without sewage, water, heat, or electricity courtesy of the grid; think what it will mean when the fuel to provide all these things just vanishes).
then a devastated environment, most specifically, the absence of potable water.
unfortunately, these wake-up calls also sound like death bells, so there is no comfort there.
back to the contradictions, this is the first sign of dementia, a rigid inability to accommodate conflicting information. the undeveloped or pathological solution is to simply assimilate the conflict into a palatable world view. so those pointing out the nudity of the emperor are the 'crazy conspiracists' on one end of the spectrum, and on the other all contradictions are happily folded into the rapture of the 144,000 where nothing really matters because god is ultimately deciding everything.
ya just gotta wonder how the 30 million members of evangelical churches that preach the rapture reconcile the fact that 29,856,000 members of their own faith will be summarily crisped.
oh, but then their heads would blow up.
Re the childishness ---
It was during the Reagan administration that I first noticed a new thing happening. Reagan was giving everybody permission to be irresponsible, with a nudge, wink, and ol' Ron wouldn't think the worse of you if you just cut loose and acted like a pig. So naturally lots of people did.
It was back then too that the rich began decisively turning their backs on the rest of us---a milestone was the rise of the gated community, and then of course tax "reform." They re-formed it all right, into a hog trough for the privileged. Another one in the eye for socially responsible behavior.
By now an entire generation has grown up thinking it could be just like bad little kids...do whatever they want, not answer to anybody, even be blatant about it---as in Rush, Coulter, and all the grassroots fascists cited in the excellent Buzzwatch series "Dangerous Clowns." Feeds right into the Bush mentality.
In other words, "You expect me to be polite, kind, considerate, compassionate? Wotta chump. Wotta sucker. Fuck you, catch AIDS and die," etc. etc. And so now it's getting truly ugly, as anyone could have predicted given the developments of the 80s.
How do you turn around a thing like that? Where have all the good people gone? And where did all these demons quoting Scripture pop up from?
Yeah, I know, naive question.
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