Heads They Win, Tails You Lose

25 Aug, 2009 | Australian Values, Democracy, Media Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first send mad — Euripides

 

In 2007  we pleaded

 … tell me that America isn’t completely barmy, batty, berserk, bonkers, cracked, crazed, cuckoo, crazy, demented, deranged, dippy, flipped out, fruity, haywire, insane, loony, lunatic, mad, maniacal, manic, mental, nuts, nutty, out of their minds, potty, psycho, screw loose, screwy, unbalanced, unglued, unhinged, unzipped and whacko.

It is truer today than it was then.

As Glenn Greenwald says this week at Salon,

“ There’s little question that when people look back at this period in American history, it will be difficult to comprehend what happened in the Bush era — and especially how we blithely started a devastating war over complete fiction, while simultaneously instituting a criminal torture regime and breaking whatever laws we wanted. But far more remarkable still will be the fact that, other than a handful of low-level sacrificial lambs, those responsible — both in politics and the establishment media — not only suffered no consequences, but continued to wield exactly the same power, with exactly the same level of pompous self-regard, as they did before all of that happened. Looking back several decades or more from now, who will possibly be able to understand how that happened: the almost perfect inverse relationship between one’s culpability and the price they paid for what they unleashed?

He’s talking about the amazing revelations this week by Tom Ridge, the first head of the US Department of Homeland Security, that he had been pressured for political reasons to raise the terror threat level just before the 2004 elections.

“ [Ridge] wasn’t keen on writing a tell-all. But in ‘The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again’, out September 1, Ridge says he wants to shake “public complacency” over security. And to do that, well, he needs to tell all. Especially about the infighting he saw that frustrated his attempts to build a smooth-running department. Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

What is extraordinary but not surprising is that those on the US right, now told categorically that they were wrong when they said the government wouldn’t do something like that and that the left were loony conspiracy theorists, take a position something like, “Yes but we were right to be wrong and the left were wrong to be right because, you know, we respected Our President but the left were just Bush Haters.”

Greenwald addressed this craziness in his Salon column this week

“ Ambinder’s belief that there is nothing other than blind “Bush hatred” that could have justified such a belief — and his accompanying self-defense that journalists like him had no way of knowing any of this — is patently false. [A] 2006 Time column by Josh Marshall … details the ample empirical evidence suggesting that “that the Bush Administration orchestrates its terror alerts and arrests to goose the GOP’s poll numbers.”

And [t]here is an exhaustive and lengthy (17 minutes) segment from Keith Olbermann early last year that “weaves from each revelation of an intelligence failure or a Democratic political victory to an almost immediate orange alert or ‘new threat’ from al Qaeda.”

Olbermann’s conclusion after examining all the evidence: “what we were told about terror, and not told, for security reasons, has overlapped considerably with what we were told about terror, and not told, for political reasons” (Olbermann had been raising the same suspicion for many years).

The reason journalists such as Ambinder saw no such evidence wasn’t because it didn’t exist. It existed in abundance; you had to suffer from some form of moral, intellectual or emotional blindness not to see it. It’s because they didn’t want to see it, because — as Ambinder said — they trusted the Bush administration as good and decent people who might err but would never do anything truly dishonest.

It’s because only loser Leftist ideologues distrusted Bush officials and the overriding goal of establishment journalists is to prove that they are not like them, that they’re much more serious and responsible and thus would never attribute bad motives to government leaders such as those who ran the Bush administration.

Putting Greenwald’s piece together with the insanity and ignorance of the US health insurance debate it is quite clear that the US is in mental, moral and political free fall. It is thrashing and flailing about for something to hold onto, not knowing where it is going. And it is going into a very dark pit.

 

Thank you for reading this far!  You might think producing a post like this takes a bit of work. 
It does! If you’ve appreciated it you might consider encouraging me. ( We all like validation! )   

Buy Me A Coffee

All posts

Categories

You might also like:

Roll up! Roll up! The Circus is in Town!

The clown car on the road to hell   es, folks! The circus is in town and the Clown Car is in the Big Top. Watch HeeHaw Howard being punished for dragging out the election date and spraying the crowd with endless government advertising. See...

You Are a Threat to US Security

Boulleda HadjIf you can use a computer, you are a threat to the United States    elissa Hoffer is one of those lawyers intentionally slandered in January by Charles Stimson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, the subject of our...

‘Compassionate’ Costello Reach-around

  Costello reaches out to the downtrodden ... [Drawing by Tony King, 1969]   ... The electorate merely retches. r Costello said that in the election campaign he would talk about what Australia needs for its future, in particular drawing the...

Thomas Paine on David Hicks

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.”

Passionate Indifference

Indonesian war crime     SW Deputy Coroner, Dorelle Pinch, this week found that the newsmen known as the Balibo Five were deliberately killed by Indonesian forces 32 years ago to cover up the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.   She has...

Dulce et decorum est

  (Hint: No it's not) atched The Einstein Factor this evening and the second contestant’s subject was the life and poetry of Wilfred Owen (more or less). One of the poems mentioned — which of course it had to be — was Dulce et Decorum Est. Everyone...

Lynton Crosby Outed

  . . . as Dutton’s Mews Muse (probably)   ir Roger has it on authority from multiple sources that the “Dead Cat on the Table” ploy, most recently fed to and trotted out by Peter Dutton, is the signature work of one Lynton Crosby....

Happy Birthday

Today was a dual anniversary – the 221st anniversary of the birth of (European) Australia and the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robbie Burns. The two are related. Burns was a fierce advocate of Enlightenment principles and the fight for the rights of citizens...

Special Intel Ops

Night of the Big Dicks pecial Intel Ops, Sir Roger is required to inform his readers, may actually AT THIS VERY MOMENT be taking place, or may be in preparation, or may at the very least be in prospect. (Clutches pearls) It has come to Sir Roger’s...

Keelty Must Go At Last

  Howard’s last ditch: a failure called Keelty    e wish to note the news this week that: ASIO has revealed it “consistently” advised the Howard government it had no evidence connecting Mohamed Haneef to a British...

Freedom of Speech and APEC

Do Australians have freedom of speech? o Australians have freedom of speech? And, if so, was that freedom of speech illegally curtailed by the Howard government and the NSW government during APEC? IANAL but it seems so. Freedom of speech is not a...

Keelty

  Gone at long last   ow much time should one spend on this slug? We don’t even feel like woo-hoo. Just “at last” and “good riddance” and “what took you so long”. One of the things we really dislike about (not exclusively-) Australian...

Education and Life

   Be Normal and Fit In    ir Roger’s close confidante writes: My mother used to ask me if I wouldn’t prefer to work in a bank. In those days it was a safe occupation – safe as a bank, literally. A job for life with almost guaranteed...

The Next Big “Sorry”

Sorry Bastards   ant a long-range heads-up? The question we should be asking Abbott and Gillard and all of their various immigration spokespeople right now is this:   How do you feel about the inevitability that — possibly in your lifetime — a...

Is Labor Finished?

  "A Realm of Despicably Effortless Incompetence"   ir Roger Migently is not angry. He is over it.According to Friday’s ABC 7.30 Report: The Government is pushing ahead with its demand that dozens of dentists repay...

Malcolm Turnbull: Next Prime Minister?

  Backing into the limelight ir Roger believes Malcolm Turnbull could easily be the next Prime Minister of Australia.What do you think? Here’s why: 1) The coalition and the right wing media will bring too much pressure on Julia Gillard about...

Now LOOK ….

   Not this bloody time   W e have held it in for a very long time but today was the last straw. For seeming ages journalists have been describing people who defend themselves against legal allegations, or who mount arguments against legal charges, as...

‘this pathetic bleating for shelter from skepticism’

Atheists need a little woman to calm them down   es, we know it is a bit late in the day to be discovering Pharyngula but we did and there is nothing to be done but fall down and worship. No, we mean sit down and learn. PZ Myers is a prolific,...

Blameshifting 101

You've got to hand it to our Prime Monitor. He is the absolute guru of blameshifting and that’s something to be proud of. You know, he has a position to maintain, an aura to protect, an air of infallibility to project. We can’t have him looking weak and fallible.  He...

Heads They Win, Tails You Lose

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first send mad — Euripides   n 2007  we pleaded  … tell me that America isn’t completely barmy, batty, berserk, bonkers, cracked, crazed, cuckoo, crazy, demented, deranged, dippy, flipped out, fruity, haywire,...

Sack Keelty

  Sack the Bastard   …and DIC Senior Management, particularly the Deputy Secretary in charge of borders, compliance, and detention, the avowed expert in the use of the visa as a tool for enforcing (at the time) Liberal Party policy. Yes, it’s our old friend,...

A Moron in a Hurry – Part 4

Mollified? Stupefied? Unutterably Bored?   en and Whitlam of Australia, not to forget the moron in a hurry, it’s time to bid farewell to old plinth-bound, red-taped Goth the Whittler, his soul, his vision and his legacy chained and frozen in...

On War: Notes For My Son

  …and for yours, and for all of us.   ir Roger is currently in the land of the poppy (the other one) but not near Flanders fields. Yet there are poppies here in the South of France and the whiff of war and bloody conflict is inescapably,...

Now LOOK ….

   Not this bloody time   W e have held it in for a very long time but today was the last straw. For seeming ages journalists have been describing people who defend themselves against legal allegations, or who mount arguments against legal charges, as...

Loose Ends, Bad Ends

   Loose ends:   ‘Lying’ Downer, the Minister for opening his mouth and seeing what comes out, denying everything on principal and making it up as he goes ”  has rejected claims of a major connection between opium production in Afghanistan and funding of the...

Australian Refujesus Exhibition

Minister von Rock Opens Australian Refujesus Exhibition 15 October, 2006 The Australian Minister for Pacific Island Guano Getaways and Internment (PIGGI), Mistress von Rock, has opened a very tasteful photographic exhibition of pathetically grateful boat people to...

Blameshifting 101

You've got to hand it to our Prime Monitor. He is the absolute guru of blameshifting and that’s something to be proud of. You know, he has a position to maintain, an aura to protect, an air of infallibility to project. We can’t have him looking weak and fallible.  He...

The Ascent of Man & Descent of the DLP

Draining the Swamp   This is by way of ridding ourselves of the bible-bashers,    he deluded believers in absolute truths and faiths built on fairy stories and long-disproven assertions about the universe and how it works, who have lately...

The Front Fell Off

ll the sage analysts and opinionators, as well as the “'King Makers'” – as News Ltd “'journalist's” like to refer to themselves – seem to be agreed that there is a mood for change in the electorate. They agree that it’s not really about John Howard...

The Liars and the Other Liars

This morning, at the breakfast board ...   ir Roger seemed agitated. Sucking the grease of a plump peasant pheasant thigh from his fingers, he suddenly ejaculated, “Did he bury the bloody thing before he cremated it‽ Or did he cremate it...

0 Comments