She says that she is no hero, and I know why she says it. But I must disagree. She proved her heroism in Iraq and on Capitol Hill.
Why was she chosen to "star" in a Wag the Dog-style myth? Partially because the circumstances were right, and partially because she's pretty. I imagine that someone did a quick psychological profile and presumed, incorrectly, that she would go along. The melodramatic "TV Movie" quality of the myth leads me to suspect that Karl Rove had a hand in its production.
The entire invasion of Iraq had a made-in-Hollywood feel. The allegedly "spontaneous" downing of the Saddam statue (by Chalabi's goons posing as real Baghdad residents) is the most obvious case in point, but I also saw fake battle footage that same day.
Every magician's trick is revealed eventually.
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Republicans today engage in what I think is a politically-rare kind of magical thinking--a conviction that appearance governs substance, rather than the reverse. It's like voodoo and likely most other primitive religions, a belief that what happens to the symbol then happens to the object symbolized. In voodoo, if you stick the doll with a pin, the person the doll represents is affected with pain.
Which is to say that, incredible as it may seem to an objective view, Republicans assume that when they change the appearance of a thing by casting an illusion, the thing ceases to actually be what it was, and adjusts itself to match the illusion. The scholars of this belief have developed magical techniques of images and rhetoric (see Rove's playbook, a true Book of Spells) and have been well-schooled in how to employ the techniques. Unfortunately for them, reality doesn't adjust to match the illusion; an illusion is just an illusion.
This kind of thinking is a quantum leap beyond mere spin and artful lies. Americans have always been lied to (although the explicit concept of spin is novel). But hitherto, no one was crazy enough to suppose that illusion controls actual reality. It's an extremely primitive--virtually prehistoric--interpretation of how symbols work. Let's call it what it is: superstition. And let's not ever forget that what encourages them to elevate this superstition into our political governance is the fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity.
unirealist, nice analysis. They have truly become the neo-postmodernists/New Agers. They used to laugh at Shirley MacLain - "We create our own reality".
And there is an occult element to all of this symbology.
So do you think that they actually believe their own spin...or is it just clever illusion for the masses it is employed to control?
Joseph, Rove is definitely a factor, but I would add two words: Karen Hughes
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/04/media_lynch_mob.html
The lynch story was made up by the Washington Post that admitted the army told them not to run with that story from the very first article. What a bumch of little propaganda robots the left has become. you guys dont care if it is true at all anymore.
Isn't it cute? A right-wing propaganda robot accuses lefties of his own sin. As though the Washington Post and (get this) USA Today were PROGRESSIVE rag!
Oh, surrrre. We progressives just LOVE what those journals have done an d are doing. We just LOVED their coverage of the Iraq war and the lead up to it. Progressives never embraced Bill Moyer for all those things he said last night about media complicity in White House mythology. Progressives never applauded Steve Colbert when he called the journalists at the correspondents' dinner "typists."
And Progressives ALWAYS support everything Democrats do or say. Why, just look at the stuff David Lindorff is saying right now. Hell, check out any random issue of (say) the Nation or Z Magazine during the Clinton years...
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