The "theory" that Rush has been pummelling his Ditto Heads with all day: Joe Wilson has been a part of a double super secret background conspiracy with the DNC since day one, well before he was sent by the CIA to Niger.Even by plot-spotter standards, Rush's latest is particularly inane.
Yes, that's right. According to Rush, the entire plan to send George W. Bush's own father's Man in Iraq -- a decades-long expert in African and Middle-Eastern affairs to Niger -- was all just a ploy by Democrats "to undermine the War in Iraq and the Bush Presidency," as Rush repeatedly described it.
We suppose then, that Bush 41's letter sent to Wilson saying that he concurred with much of the article that Wilson wrote prior to the war in the San Jose Mercury News was also part of that conspiracy.
Why is Dubya's own father trying to destroy Dubya's own "Presidency", dammit?!
Comparison is instructive. Remember the "Bush bulge"? Remember the many damning indications that W wore a wire to the debate?
This blog devoted much attention to that controversy. At that time, rightists continually derided the bulge-spotters -- including Your Friend and Humble Narrator -- as dreadful conspiracy theorists. My fellow researchers and I were all lumped alongside the Dale Gribble-esque fear-junkies -- the kind of people who believe in crashed flying saucers and pass out copies of Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Our critics even made oh-so-clever references to tin foil hats.
At that time, conservative pundits reminded their readers that conspiracy is a very, very bad thing to allege. Good citizens must never allow themselves even a moment's speculation along those verboten lines.
Unless you are Rush Limbaugh. Unless you are defending Karl Rove.
Then you are allowed to spew evidence-free conspiratorial hogwash all day long. Such are the double standards now afflicting our nation.
The bulge, of course, was at least partially vindicated by both a NASA photo analyst (who nearly lost his gig for confirming that something was definitely there) and the Secret Service (which said that it was a security device -- a claim you are free to believe if you choose).
Will Limbaugh's theory receive similar vindication? I doubt it.
Face it: The entire right-wing propaganda machine rests on conspiracy theory. During the Clinton years, reactionary propagandists peddled one paranoid scenario after another. Remember "Hillary killed Vincent Foster"? Remember "Bill killed Ron Brown"? Remember "Bill Clinton was KGB"? Remember "Bill Clinton was CIA"? Remember "Bill Clinton killed 17 little children just because he enjoyed seeing 'em fry"?
The far right would have nearly disappeared in the 1990s if not for conspiracy theories. Even now, the entire conservative power structure depends on certain carefully-cultivated red-state conspiratorial beliefs -- specifically, the belief that any journalist who publishes a truth inconvenient to Bush must be the malign marionette of a mythical liberal cabal.
No left-wing site known to me links to the Protocols. Plenty of "Christian" and right-wing sites do just that.
Real "complots" (to use a European term) do exist, of course. Just ask Karl Rove, the master manipulator. Conspiracy is what he does, day after day, right there in the White House.
Such is the paradox: The actual conspiracies in this world are perpetrated by the very people who benefit from keeping their easily-gulled constituents in a perpetual state of paranoia. Unfortunately, the Rovians make sure that the paranoia is directed against the wrong targets.
9 comments:
These people are beyond the realm of theory, conspiracy or otherwise.
It's plain and brazen lying, poisoning the public discourse to an extent no one could have thought possible a few years ago, even in a country which gets excited over flag-burning and the pledge of allegiance.
The number of people they persuade may be relatively small, but its sufficient to sway an election, particularly when they're already rigging the vote count.
Public discourse was always next to worthless in this country, but it's entered the realm of religion now (I mean the religion of Republican power). Reason and fact are as foreign to this debate as they are to discussions of the Trinity.
"Remember 'Hillary killed Vincent Foster'? Remember 'Bill killed Ron Brown'? Remember 'Bill Clinton was KGB'? Remember 'Bill Clinton was CIA'? Remember 'Bill Clinton killed 17 little children just because he enjoyed seeing 'em fry'?"
Okay, this is hysterical. Because I remember Hillary and/or Bill killing Brown, Foster, etc., but I do not recall an allegation that Bill Clinton was then or had ever been KGB. I am laughing out loud at that "theory." Not that I doubt it existed mind you, but that's one from the anals of Right-wing conspiracyville that went straight by me. Totally. So funny.
And John Gibson of FOXNews has gotten his fax of the talking points too. His Friday "My Word" segment not only included the Joe Wilson "tanked the report" concept but also the idea of blonde Valerie Plame as the behind-the-curtain Hillary pulling the strings of national policy. Whew!
Anonymous at 2:31 PM forgets the allegations that Bill Clinton was KGB.
Let me refresh your memory. The story had to do with a visit the then-Oxford student made to the USSR back in 1969. He supposedly met with the usual minders which the Soviet government assigned to foreign (especially American) visitors. The minders were inevitably KGB. This doesn't mean he was a recruited agent.
He may have been GRU.
Lordy: pomeroo is back, and so is the right-wing disinformation campaign.
There's nothing very loveable about Joseph Wilson -- after all, he had the ideological credentials to work for Bush Sr., which is damnation itself, and Wilson's pronouncements on matters other than Niger are thoroughly Republican establishment -- but pomeroo and friends can't seem to get their facts right. Or perhaps they just don't want to get the facts right, because doing so would offend to the authors of Republican talking points. To wit, Wilson never said Dick Cheney sent him to Niger, and his report has been corrorborated by all reputable sources in the debate. Indeed, it's been confirmed by Bush's own inspectors, who found no ongoing bomb project and no yellow cake. And of course Bush knew there was no yellow cake from the outset, which is why Iraqi nuclear facilities were left unguarded for weeks and months, with the locals and any stray foreign jihadists interested in the matter of nuclear technology having free run of them.
Ah, pomeroo, leave your droppings elsewhere....
Cons piracy - organized obstruction of justice
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