...say it with me now...
You Haven't Been Paying Attention.
Perusing Freepville yesterday to see their reaction to the sorry Pittsburgh saga, I saw where one poster actually wrote that if this turned out to be a hoax the young McCain supporter would be like an Obama supporter because they are all liars. Logic is not a right-winger strong point, and although a lack of ability to follow a functionally valid line of argument is not equivalent to fabrication, it is clear from the historical record that this whole incident, despite most likely having been the "brain" child of a single person, motivations unknown to me, stands as an undeniable symbol of the world view, the attitude toward democracy, the approach to politics, the modus operandi of contemporary American right-wing identity.
"SHE MADE IT UP!"...Drudge's headline screams. Well, big surprise there, Matt, but, in case you haven't or have refused to notice, for the right-wing and the neo-con chicken hawk stable of pundits, sycophants and constabulary for the past eight years, veracity has been an amusing archaic concept to be played with like ninth-grade hearts in mash notes passed from student to student.
Pronoun-wise, Judith Miller, Condoleezza Rice, Sarah Palin, Peggy Noonan - arguments could be made that the blaring tabloid headline could apply to them all. Karl Rove, William Kristol, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ari Fleishcher, it you change it to 'he;' so many could be linked to such a declaration of "breaking news."
Want do we want? Permanent rule! How do we get it? Make it up! Leo Strauss gave us permission!
This is not about schadenfreude. Ashley Todd has a lot more serious stuff to worry about then whether I personally feel sorry for her or am looking for rotten tomatoes to pack up and road-trip up to Pittsburgh. I take no pleasure in discussing her personally, and am doing my best to avoid it - she is
just sad - and I'm not naive about the human motivations and propensity for lying, but it is this event, a fiction she spent time constructing, by the way, while she was supposed to be registering voters, that I want to talk about. It is about severe dysfunctional actions and their ultimate effects.
As related by Ron Suskind, the story is well-known among those who have been paying attention, of his conversation with a Bush aide back in 2004:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Apparently the young campaign worker tried in her own little way to become one of history's actors. We have seen how that works out. Actually, it works out just fine - as long as you are big name, have no functioning conscience, have no sense of cause-and-effect, have the right connections, and most importantly, a place to run and hide when you are done wiping your ass with the good towels.
But ultimately, the weapons of mass destruction have to be there, because truth will out and a world view that does not wed but leaves out either critical thinking skills and human empathy, and a connection between the two, is going to be shown up as false - made up. And this young woman's actions come at the end, and, in part, as a result of, an eight-year run of a massive American-led and citizenry-complicit world-view experiment in just making crap up to suit our purposes.
Todd, who has in common with all those big names that she didn't think or care about the results of her actions, made in particular, the mistakes of being a little late to the game and, also, in particular, of being a bit player, so what she gets at this point is to be a symbol of the unnecessary ideological blister of ignorance and bigotry on our culture that was allowed to fester to extreme infection, her booby prize for her loyalty to the Orwellian cause.
For the rest of us, though, we are left to deal - and hope that she is ALSO, for her and our redemption's sake, a symbol of a newly revived awareness on the critical need of ferreting out the liars, quickly AND judiciously, instead of celebrating them and hanging on their every word, and then marching off the cliff just outside of their Potemkin villages at their "really-no-I-was-attacked-because-of-my-support-of-McCain-which-is-therefore-an-attack-on-you-and-freedom-and-us-all-and-oh-by-the-way-it-was-one-of-THOSE-guys" insistence.
I have my doubts, but as indications indicate, it seems things are looking "better" on the reality-based front (all that is good and bad that that conveys) than they have in a while, the vote-fraud strategy/meme crap notwithstanding. Here's to this incident becoming a symbol of something new for the next eight years, something instructive beyond don't lie to the police, and not just a punchline. We do have to get through the shit storm of disingenuiousness and slander that will come from the right over the next two weeks, but hang on tight, everyone, and we'll celebrate the symbolism that emerges on the other side and then get to the work of dealing with reality, a reality where McCain supporters who act like McCain supporters are like, um, McCain supporters.
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