Americans in Denial about Iraq ( a good read!!!)

[Mari333]

I see this every day where I live and this guy NAILS IT

http://www.msnbc.com/news/969219.asp?0cl=c1

[newsguyatl]

1. damn good piece

[Skittles]

2. isn't it strange, Mari

he's talking about THEM. Not us, but THEM. I've seen through this charade since day one. I was on to Dubya when he was running for governor of my state. What is it about us - most DUers - that made us remain among those 10% who were - ARE - seemingly immune to the bullshit being thrown at us?????

[Mari333]

5. I dont know, I sent him an email and thanked him

for the article....I dont know why people bought the bullshit..I see it here in my town now, people turn their heads away from my bumper stickers, the flags are off the cars...there is a look of guilt and anger, and they dont look me in the face..
I know one thing...anger comes after denial and guilt manifest..
a lot of people didnt want to believe we lived in a COUP, and I knew since 2000 thats how this country has been run..I never forgot it...
I dont know why some people seek the truth and others just believe any horseshit thats thrown at them...
Its a puzzlement.

[Skittles]

6. and it's not just stupid people like freepers

I work with and know many, many very intelligent people - people who I personally LIKE- who were so easily duped. Who are STILL DUPED. It makes me sad for my country. It's like they couldn't see past their own instinct for revenge against "evil" to see reason. It's so very scary.

[bobthedrummer]

45. A coup of some type indeed

launched 12-12-2000. I concur Mari333.

[janekat]

25. I think it's because of lot of us don't "tow the line" and are

noncomformists. I know that if someone "orders" me to do something or tries to control me - I get a very bad feeling and usually end up doing the opposite.

[Skittles]

31. yes, that does describe me

I've also never been a person who fell for fads, which seems to be rampant in America.

[Brucey]

3. Wow, was that ever nice.

I enjoyed it immensely. He boiled it down, put it in beautiful terms, and used impecable logic. Thanks.

[wuushew]

4. This paragraph pretty much sums it up

Bush knows what a lot of his critics have forgotten: the Iraq war is not just about blood and treasure, or even about democracy or WMD or terror. It’s about American pride. And people—perfectly intelligent people—have always been willing to sacrifice sweet reason in order to save face, to protect pride. As George Orwell pointed out, they will refuse to see what’s right in front of their noses. He called this condition a kind of political schizophrenia, and society can live quite comfortably with it, he said, until “a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

[Arianrhod]

7. Wow. Poignant article.

"Will the public recoil in horror, claiming he’s somehow lied to them? I don’t think so." < end quote >

I don't think so, either. While I've seen some surprising opinions quietly alluded to from a few of my conservative coworkers, I'm one of perhaps 3 or 4 people (out of an organization of over 400) who actually voice negative opinions about this Administration--especially when it comes to the Iraq invasion. People seem to believe that being "patriotic" means supporting the government no matter what it does. That's why they allowed the Repubs to destroy Clinton, why they allowed the Repubs to steal elections, why they allowed the Repubs to destroy and steal countries. Nobody cared about Clinton's sex life, but just as few cared about the personal vendetta that was carried out against him because of it. And just as few care about a few tens of thousands of unseen foreigners dying and lying gravely wounded in hospitals at the hands of men who claim to be acting in the country's interest, but who in fact are merely using violence to advance their own power and wealth.

The public, by and large, does not find this horrific.

However, like a Mafia don who literally gets away with murder until finally brought up on tax-evasion charges, the public has now recoiled from the announcement that they will have to pay an additional $87 billion for this splendid little war. It's an indictment against us that that's what it takes to get our attention, but hey--whatever works. :shrug:

[Mari333]

8. and the news media in the US

ignores the TV coverage of the dead soldiers bodies coming home, ignores the carnage in Iraq, and will continue to ignore it..
The corporations who own the networks wont allow it.
I saw the producer of the film Wag the Dog on MSNBC tonight, and he literally said "we wont ever see the kind of reporting we saw that ended the war in Vietnam..the carnage, the horror, the bloody mess"..
Thats what finally woke up the US public..Im afraid that , until the US media (if they ever) wake up and start showing the TRUTH of what is happening over there, people will stay in abstract denial.
The closest anyone has come to calling Bush an outright liar are Kennedy and Byrd...and no one in the US media is screaming about PNAC...many of the Dems are still waffling and watching the polls.

[alcuno]

20. Will the public recoil in horror?

I actually think that the administration grossly miscalculated; they gave the American people an out. In other words, I'm not so certain that our fellow citizens won't turn around and claim that they were duped. It's a way for them to get out of their position without being at fault for it in the first place. "It's not our fault, we were lied to." I suppose that the polls support the idea that this is what is happening now; no WMD's, no liberation, no real reason. It can't be our fault so it must be the administration's.

[Arianrhod]

28. Perhaps.

But somehow I don't think this Administration are going to allow themselves to be seen as liars.

[Arianrhod]

9. Erasing dupe (I hope). . . .

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

10. With all I have ever read of post war Germany including the writings

of Victor Frankel...this just makes my heart hurt.

[Mari333]

17. YES I saw footage once of the German public

when they were shown the death camps right down the road from them..they had that same look on their faces...denial...fear...guilt...unbelief ...and deep down they KNEW it was all happening right next door....
I see the same look on US faces when they are faced with many truths they would rather now deal with...

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

19. Thanks for expanding what I was getting at

In Man's Search for Meaning, he talked about the women who would go to the camps to make crafts who were in COMPLETE denial about the fact that these leather crafts were fashioned from the skins of Jews.

I was filling up at the gas station the other day and I said to my friend sitting in the car "why don't they just figure out how to run a combustion engine on blood and then we can cut out the oil in the middle of it all?" You should have seen the looks I got...I don't care.

[Mari333]

24. Good for YOU

I have a pic on my car of a dead soldiers casket...people always turn their heads...they dont want to see it.

[kentuck]

11. I have been saying this for quite some time here on DU....

Just not so eloquently. But maybe the old proverb is correct: Pride goeth before the fall. ? But it is indeed the truth that shall set you free.

(edited for last sentence)

[Mari333]

14. Nationalistic pride is so weird

I never fully understood where the hell it comes from..what part of a person needs that? What kind of mind requires it?
Is it some subtext of a need to belong to a social group as primates?
A bizarro territorial thing? Lack of information on a grand scale?
None of it makes sense to me.

[Arianrhod]

23. as a staunch believer in evolution

my opinion is that nationalism is a remnant of our pre-ape heritage. It's that chimpanzee dominance-hierarchy thing that can be seen throughout the animal world, but especially in us and in our closest animal relatives. "Us good, them bad" has been a hallmark of human culture for 100,000 years, so it's rarely questioned.

[Arianrhod]

12. is there any way

to delete dupes when you screw up and post twice?

[never cry wolf]

13. The post will remain

but click edit, put dupe in the subject line and maybe "posted twice in the message box. Don't sweat it Arianrhod, you made good points!!

Welcome to DU!!! :hi:

[Arianrhod]

18. Thanks.

For the recommendation, the welcome and the compliment. :)

[Unknown Known]

15. Sorry - he dismisses the medias role in this crime

In fact, he denies their culpability. Since Christmas, we were deluged day after day with "Countdown To Iraq" & others on every cable news network. They cow-towed in admiration to the cabal and they misled the public with their propaganda and lack of questioning.

The problem is not really that the public was misinformed by the press before the war, or somehow denied the truth afterward.

O, really. The public was NOT MISINFORMED? It sure as hell was and the media is still denying the truth today - about how many Americans and innocent Iraqis are being killed every day - about how the military and their families are being treated, as well as cutting veterans benefits and battle pay. Ad infinitum. Look what just happened today with Judy Woodruff talking to Ted Kennedy!

The media has bowed to Bush, Rummy & Cheney time after time after time as invincible, all-knowing & unquestionable.

There were only a handful in the media who questioned. And they were ridiculed.

Sorry, I can NEVER forgive the way the media has lied and lied and lied to us and covered up for these crimes, the crimes of 9/11 and the stealing of the election so George Bush can be the WH resident.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

21. Excellent point

[OKNancy]

42. in his defense

since he lives in Europe, he is probably not aware of the 24/7 cheerleading.

[KoKo]

47. Yes, OK Nancy, that was the only "flaw" in the article. Whore US Media

who pumped and prodded and lied and whipped up a frezy for this war with Graphis of "Showdown in Iraq" and "Freedom Fries" and WMD/Chem and Biological....day after day after day.

Almost no coverage of Robert Byrd until he got his 30,000 e-mails and then there was a little mention here and there and nothing on the "Whore Cables." If it hadn't been for C-Span who would have known?

So, the author did get news....but he would have to be in America to understand what the average American who works and has family obligations saw when they tried to get some news. Who has time to sit and read article after article from the European/British press to know what the truth was?

It's the failure of the American Press and heads should roll....Yeah...like Corporate Heads. They took their country to war....for their own propaganda reasons. It's sad to blame the American People for their whore media. They didn't see it coming and when it finally took over they had already been set up not to know the difference.

[kentuck]

16. But another point should not be overlooked....

It is the pride of George W Bush and his penchant for revenge. It happened on his watch. He was asleep at the wheel. They made him look like a fool. He would get rid of Saddam and his sons if that was the last thing he did. Somebody would pay for humiliating him. It was a personal thing with George.

[janekat]

22. The Republicans use a lot of psychological "mind games"

As an Psych major I can can see a lot of priciples of "propaganda" and "behavior modification" that is used by the Bush team. Newt Gingrich's "Contract for America" was actually cited as a classic example of propaganda. I believe that the Republican Party uses these tactics very widely.

Another principle that is well-known in political circles is the principle of "cognitive dissonance." This phenomenom is played upon enormously by the Republicans.

"what former Stanford University social psychologist Leon Festinger called cognitive dissonance. It is the distressing mental state in which people feel they "find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold."

Festinger considered the human need to avoid dissonance as basic as the need for safety or the need to satisfy hunger. It is an aversive drive that goads us to be consistent. The tension of dissonance motivates us to change either our behavior or our belief in an effort to avoid a distressing feeling. The more important the issue and the greater the discrepancy between behavior and belief, the higher the magnitude of dissonance that we will feel. In extreme cases cognitive dissonance is like our cringing response to fingernails being scraped on a blackboard—we’ll do anything to get away from the awful sound."

[janekat]

26. Find any article on "Propaganda" and "Cognitive Dissonance"

and it will explain all this. I'll try to dig one out of my old "psych" books. The Bushies must have a psychologist on staff - and I'm NOT kidding about that....

[Mari333]

27. I would love to read anything you find.

as I said, its beyond my comprehension how people can ignore so much for so long.

[janekat]

29. I'll try to post an article tomorrow night n/t

[Mari333]

30. Thanks and nitey night

=)

[janekat]

32. hey Mari -

did you used to post on another forum? I remember having a buddy named Mari from some other forum (can't remember the name of it).

[Mari333]

43. heh no I used to post as Marianne tho

on the religious tolerance boards. =)

[janekat]

44. nope - guess it's another Mari n/t

Mari - I'll be posting the article on cognitive dissonance pretty soon - so be on the lookout for it.

[Booberdawg]

33. I disagree with a couple points in this article

Some else has already pointed out that the author dismisses the role the American media played in this and that can't be stressed enough. The fact that the media has been in the bush crime family's hip pocket has long been a frustration among DUers.

On the fact that 69% of Americans think saddam was directly involved with 911 the author says

There’s nothing to back this up. So puzzled political scientist and pollsters, with evident disdain for the public, suggested the connection is just the result of fuzzy thinking: Al Qaeda is evil, Saddam is evil, the attacks on 9/11 were evil and folks just draw dumb conclusions.Other analysts pointed the finger at the administration, which spins harder and faster than Hurricane Isabel to convince us the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror begun on September 11, without quite explaining where it fits in.

Are they serious? How the fuck can they be so puzzled? The administration didn't just "spin" Iraq as part of the war on terror without quite explaining where Iraq fits in, they purposely and deliberately bent over backwards to parse their words very painstakingly to leave the implicit impression that saddam was responsible for the 911 attack!Fuzzy thinking of the American public my ass! It was the moral equivalent of a lie!


Here's another snip:
Yet just this week President Bush himself (and Donald Rumsfeld, too!) admitted that information to substantiate this popular fantasy just doesn’t exist. “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11,” Bush said flatly, almost matter-of-factly, on Wednesday.

Is the president taking a chance here? Will the public recoil in horror, claiming he’s somehow lied to them? I don’t think so.

Well I DO think so. Not to the extent that the public is recoiling in horror, but I do believe those that didn't previously know or refused to see he was lying DO feel that they have been lied to now. WE may know that every time he connected saddam with 911 he parsed his words very carefully, but THEY thought they were hearing there was a DEFINATE CONNECTION. It cuts both ways. It worked the way the administration wanted it to in order to get support and now it is going to bite them in the ass now that people realize they've been either lied to or tricked. I don't think they are just dismissing it. I think more and more people who voted for him or supported him after the selection are now having second thoughts and turning on him.

I think folks are getting mad. People don't like being lied to. I don't. Even if it's bad news, I prefer someone who shoots from the hip and I don't want the sugar coated version.

Drip, drip, drip.

The worm is turning.

[kentuck]

34. Yes, if 69% person believe something is true that is actually false...

then the media has to accept some responsibility. They have a responsibility to inform the populace.

[Booberdawg]

35. Actually I think that has more to do with how the administration spun it

the bush junta bent over backwards to give the public the idea that saddam was behind 911 and I hold them primarily responsible for that.

However I agree that information contradicting the snake oil being sold by the bush gang was widely available and under reported or ignored by the media.

[bpilgrim]

36. we are EXPOSING OUR SELVES as PAPER TIGERS unless...

these fools actually plan to wage nuclear war if push comes to shove.

however if the world doesn't react... we will topple ourselves as we struggle to be the worlds policemen.

not only has N. Korea called their bluff as well as others on that list of 60 nations - have they published that list yet? - but our own fucking allies are forming a brand spanking new european military alliance outside of NATO to directly challenge the PNAC agenda :wow:

the neo-cons brought us to the end-game quicker then anyone could have imagined just a few short years ago :scared:

peace

[getbush]

37. Right on

But then, America is in denial about a lot of things.

[newyawker99]

48. Hi getbush!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[neebob]

38. I wouldn't call it denial

but assuming the bad people have good intentions and think like we do and our rules apply to them and stuff. Refusing to see evil. I had a run-in with a sociopathic con man a few years ago, so my "evilvision" is very clear. I learned a lot from my experience, and I could really bore you with some details. There's nothing like being nearly ruined to improve one's common sense. The realization it was intentional is a profound thing.

I think there's a lack of empathy at work, too - a failure to think about what it would be like to be Bush & Co., what would motivate someone to do the kinds of things they've done, and more importantly, what it feels like to be anyone who is not "us." They don't even try to imagine what it's like in Afghanistan or Iraq, even when they see it on TV.

And with some people I think it's pure selfishness. As long as they're still employed and have nice things and are generally keeping up with the Joneses, they don't feel it affects them personally. In other words, they don't give a shit.

[radfringe]

39. Wars are seldom fought

for "altruistic" or "Noble and honorable" reasons

Dig a bit deeper into the geo-political spin and you will find that the majority of wars are started because someone wants power/wealth

It's hard for 'muricans to believe we would actually invade a country without some noble and honorable reason, or in the case of Iraq - without it really being a immediate threat

slowly 'muricans are waking up to the inconceiveable notion that the whistleass lied


http://www.cafeshops.com/radicalfringe.7262223

[Cheswick2.0]

40. It would help if he didn't start out with an insulting cliche`

He uses the discription "solid looking american matron". Why didn't he just say "fat stupid beaujoise capitalist who needs to get laid"?

Other than that I agreed with what he said except the part about the media having done its job. Of course the media did not do its job, why pretend otherwise? A more interesting take would have included honest analysis on what part the media played in this mess.

[cmd]

41. Exactly as I see it.

It's very hard to say that you were wrong. 87 billion is helping people see the light.

[kentuck]

46. Were the American people humiliated as much as the Pentagon ?

I think revenge was a motive. But it had to be wrapped into some type of civilized retribution...