From a purely academic point of view future historians will find this period an interesting example of how manipulated perceptions struggled obstinately with suppressed reality for the center stage of the policy debate. Some of the questions that will be asked fifty years from now are: what was Scooter Libby really charged with? Is that all? How come millions of people could die in Darfur without anyone noticing? Why were people obsessed with the possible criminal behavior of a handful of Marines in Iraq and uninterested in why their wonderful universities and high schools could produce kids who would be interested in blowing up buildings, spreading poison gas, or maybe shooting down airliners with surface to air missiles. And the most interesting thing about this period is that for a brief time, the manufactured perceptions almost looked like winning. Until reality weighed in.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Quote du Jour
Wretchard at the Belmont Club obsesses on what he sees as overcoverage of the Haditha massacre and under coverage of other as or more compelling stories:
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2 comments:
I like Belmont less and less these days because its writers have become, to me, more and more Bush apologists. He may dress up his writing a bit more than some, but it is the same old same old. He may not outright say "John Murtha is a traitor," but the fact that that quote alone is so inconsistent (Haditha is a big deal... Scooter Libby is not meaningless... and people do write a lot about what causes the terrorists). And his closing sentance just smacks of holier-than-thou conservative elitism. It's as if to convince people that in reality, it doesn't matter if some Iraqi kids were butchered or if Libby was part of a concerted effort to blow the cover of a CIA employee. And you know that "manufactured perceptions" is just another word for "liberal" or "the left."
True enough, but Wretchard is still one of the best bloggers insofar as taking the long view even if his politics do suck.
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