Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Promoting ignorance
More on Reagan's legacy
(...) for all the effort the usual suspects are devoting to making Dubya and Ronnie trans-generational partners in the Eternal Fight for Freedom™, Reagan actively encouraged the rise of the scourges Dubya would like to take credit for defeating (al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction").
The line of inheritance is much clearer when it comes to the pair's jointly corrosive effect on American politics -- including what Matt Yglesias describes as the notion that "an inability to comprehend policy details and nuance is an important qualification for high office."
There's nothing accidental in how Bush/Reaganite flacks push this line. Promoting ignorance as an essential component of leadership -- supposedly because too much thought diffuses one's "moral clarity' -- makes it okay in the minds for their supporters for them to be ignorant ("I know what's right; I don't need to know anything else!").
The GOP powers-that-be know that the things they're after would not be supported by the public, if the public knew about them. So it's to their benefit to discourage intelligent discussion, and to prevent voters from thinking they should know more about the issues. (As the guy who wrote the Bushite instruction manual would say, the proles must not be allowed to become conscious.)
[Swopa] wrote on Saturday:
Reagan's legacy is that his administration was the dry run for the governmental horror show we're witnessing now. Seeing how much they got away with back then, the same charlatans and crooks who were in charge of the show have returned to do the same things, except more brazenly.
A key element of how the brazen forces of evil have gotten away with so much, both then and now, is that were smart/cynical enough to put an amiable "big brother" (remember, the term wasn't ironic when Orwell chose it) with an aw-shucks way of talking out front as their spokesmodel. And part of their success has been reducing the national dialogue to their spokesmodels' level of platitudes and monosyllables.
Praising that method of speech as conveying "optimism" and "moral clarity" (and even as part of being a "great communicator") is, essentially, the same thing as praising the accomplice in a bank robbery for his skill in driving the getaway car.
Posted by: Swopa on Jun 07, 04 [needlenose]
prmn
(...) for all the effort the usual suspects are devoting to making Dubya and Ronnie trans-generational partners in the Eternal Fight for Freedom™, Reagan actively encouraged the rise of the scourges Dubya would like to take credit for defeating (al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction").
The line of inheritance is much clearer when it comes to the pair's jointly corrosive effect on American politics -- including what Matt Yglesias describes as the notion that "an inability to comprehend policy details and nuance is an important qualification for high office."
There's nothing accidental in how Bush/Reaganite flacks push this line. Promoting ignorance as an essential component of leadership -- supposedly because too much thought diffuses one's "moral clarity' -- makes it okay in the minds for their supporters for them to be ignorant ("I know what's right; I don't need to know anything else!").
The GOP powers-that-be know that the things they're after would not be supported by the public, if the public knew about them. So it's to their benefit to discourage intelligent discussion, and to prevent voters from thinking they should know more about the issues. (As the guy who wrote the Bushite instruction manual would say, the proles must not be allowed to become conscious.)
[Swopa] wrote on Saturday:
Reagan's legacy is that his administration was the dry run for the governmental horror show we're witnessing now. Seeing how much they got away with back then, the same charlatans and crooks who were in charge of the show have returned to do the same things, except more brazenly.
A key element of how the brazen forces of evil have gotten away with so much, both then and now, is that were smart/cynical enough to put an amiable "big brother" (remember, the term wasn't ironic when Orwell chose it) with an aw-shucks way of talking out front as their spokesmodel. And part of their success has been reducing the national dialogue to their spokesmodels' level of platitudes and monosyllables.
Praising that method of speech as conveying "optimism" and "moral clarity" (and even as part of being a "great communicator") is, essentially, the same thing as praising the accomplice in a bank robbery for his skill in driving the getaway car.
Posted by: Swopa on Jun 07, 04 [needlenose]
prmn
