"Reverse" Propaganda and the Narrative of Defeat
 

Rich Lowry at National Review:

The United States might be the only country in world history that reverse-propagandizes itself, magnifying its setbacks and ignoring its successes so that nothing can disturb what Sen. Joe Lieberman calls the “narrative of defeat.”


Hey, if I agreed with MSM prejudice, I'd be disinclined to acknowledge it as well. Especially if I didn't see it as "prejudice", but as "insight", or God help me, "fact".

JP

Watch how quickly the "reverse propaganda" reverses if Dem is elected POTUS. It's all about subtly sewing the idea that we are bad--when a Republican is President, and the opposite when a Democrat is Commander in Chief.

Oh, and for comparison, listen to any politician from France, Iran, Russia, China, South America (particularly Venezuela), Mexico, Cuba...

And the point is.........

There is bad, and then there is "bad"........"We bad.....we bad....."

Which are we?

Does it change over time? Is the definition of "bad" the sole propriety of one single party or belief system?

I do not see "defeat" as much as I see the inability for both extremes to actually sit down, tone down the rhetoric and find some central ground. The times we are in actually lead to extremism rhetoric because it is the only way that a dissident can be heard is to make outlandish statements. Doesn't matter which end of the spectrum as is proven by any number of posts on this site.

I keep wondering which is the more outlandish stand:

We must stay and see it through, no matter what the cost.

We must leave now and let the chips fall where they may.

Comments, anyone?

I think if a Democrat becomes prez, the media will continue to throw a negative slant on everything. I don't think the media is anti-Bush, and I don't think the media is anti-America. I think the media is pro-WHATEVER-GETS-RATINGS.

Failure is entertainment. Wrong-doing is entertainment. Success is boring, unless it can be spun into success at the expense of an innocent party.

Sadly, I think there's a good deal of truth in this.

BTW, the MSM was all over B. Clinton like stink on ***** during his presidency. The media morphs into what it needs to be to make money.

Well, Clinton did throw them a LOT of ammo. I don't recall him getting blamed for all kinds of far-flung stuff that he had nothing to do with though. Usually, the stuff he got blamed for, he had direct involvement in.

Of COURSE there is! I said it! :D:D:D:p

Be sure to vote for me in 2008.

rammstein -- I don't know if I agree.
Look at the institutional resistance by MSM to publicize (and this is just off the top of my head)

William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson's actions
Harry Reid's shady (understatement of the day) real estate dealings
Hillary Rodham Clinton's fundraising issues (though these have become so HUGE that even they're having to pay grudging attention to them)
ANY of the various Clinton "-gates"
UN fiascos galore (Oil-for-Food: largest defrauding in the history of the world; Rape; sexual harrassment/intimidation; general inefficacy)
Sandy Berger
False claims of John Kerry (medals, where/when served, discharge questions) and his CONTINUED refusal to sign a form authorizing release of his records.
Carter's unprecedented and unhinged meddling in foreign affairs, as well as his strident anti-Israel (anti-Jewish?) views.
Their own failures -- Scott Beauchamp, Jason Blair, Ward Churchill, Michael Bellesiles

Were it not for the pajamas media, we would not have known much of anything about any of the foregoing.. not to mention Monica Lewinsky or the de-bunking of Dan Rather's Memo.

... speaking of which, the foregoing doesn't even touch upon non-scandals that the MSM fabricates and won't let go -- W's ANG service, and its sufficiency as a matter of record and the host of "there's no THERE there" scandals cooked up against the Right, which are like a mind-numbing Gregorian Chant, repeated in this liberal echo chamber for the first 2 or 3 days after "revelation", only later to be proven wrong... but mysteriously never recanted.

JP

Oh yeah. Let's Ramm it 2008! :D

Ralph Peters, in the NY Post:

Well, the names on the marquees come and go, but our troops are always there for us. In good times and bad, those in uniform see us through. And, yes, our troops are defending the right of wealthy fools to make goofball propaganda films insulting them.

I can't imagine you really mean this. I agree that the media loves to bring people down and "make" scandal regardless of the party but.....the U.S. media hates [with the burning intensity of a thousand suns] GWB. This really isn't debatable and I imagine they would even admit it

Mary Mapes spent years expressly trying to take Bush down. OK, she's not "the" media, but you didn't get to a much higher pinnacle than her in MSM.

JP

You guys must be awfully young to keep crying about Bush and the media. I can't remember a president in the past four decades that hasn't been tormented by the media. IMO, the only thing that's changed is that with the Internet, we're all able to hear the whiners complain about it.

Perfectly said.

the Internet, where Everyone (myself included) can be an 11:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1194972594.jpg

I don't know. I remember the press screaming about Reagan, screaming about Bush I, then they seemed to say that Clinton was the best president ever--even if he was a self-serving lecherous pig (but that was a private matter and none of the public's business), and then screaming about Bush II...

You must have been in an alternate universe, Chris. All I ever heard was Whitewater, the various bimbos he was poking, Kenneth Starr, Monica and cigars, impeachment, yada yada, yada. It was relentless.

This explains a lot.

Charlie Krauthammer, who has been covering politics and media-covering-politics for 35 (?) years, is a trained psychiatrist, and, having watched the media coverage for the first W presidency coined the term "Bush Derangement Syndrome" in 2003 in this article.

Whatever your age, and whatever your political bent or rhetorical acumen, there has been a staggering personalization of animus towards the President himself and not just the office by the MSM in the last 7 years. And, frankly, a tolerance for personal attacks on W by the MSM.

The economy is bad? Blame Bush. (well, it's not really "bad" by any objective measure over the last several years but we'll keep telling you it is, and provide a few anecdotal evidence of a few suffering peons to support our lie.) NOTE to MSM: The plural of "anecdote" is not "data". So when periodic reports are released demonstrating improving/growing economy, the media goes into a week of self-imposed navel-gazing, rather than celebrate how good things have been, are and look to become. Did THIS happen during the Clinton Interregnum? NFW -- everything the economy did RIGHT, specifically in spite of many of Clinton's actions -- were "Bill's" successes. He was fellated by the MSM, who, when they HAD to grudgingly report his excesses or bad character, did it with an "eye roll" to show how unhip it was to have to even talk about the stuff -- LOOK! the President of France has a mistress, and everybody knows about and is COOL with it. We prudish Americans suck!

A favorite excerpt about BDS:
"One thing I've noticed about 2005: It was all George W. Bush's fault.

Yep. The world is totally unprepared when the floor of the Indian Ocean unexpectedly rips apart and kills over 200,000 people ... and it's Bush's fault. A massive storm bares down on the Gulf Coast, thousands refuse to leave and are killed ... and guess whose fault it is? Certainly not the people who were begged to evacuate.

In fact, nearly every calamity, event and news item this year has all been laid at the feet of the president. Can't find a job? Blame Bush. Can't pay the bills, take care of the kids or have bad health? Point the finger at the guy in the White House. Bad weather? That's global warming, which can be tracked right back to a certain someone not signing a piece of paper. When brave soldiers fall in combat, you know who is to blame, and it's not the terrorists.

According to some, Bush really is the most powerful man in the world, exhibiting god-like powers and smiting those who displease him.

Actually, this appears to be part of what columnist Charles Krauthammer called Bush Derangement Syndrome, which is defined as "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush."

I expect the syndrome to spread during this new year ... especially as the elections roll around.

Give me a scandal...ANY scandal

Another symptom of Bush Derangement Syndrome seems to be the unending quest by some in the mainstream media to find some sort of scandal related to the War on Terror to pin on the president. There have been many attempts all this year along these lines and I expect to see many more in the future.

The latest one involves the National Security Agency's terrorist eavesdropping program that was leaked in the New York Times, just in time for the release of a new book.

The president was furious, indicating that the leak harmed national security, hinting at a Justice Department investigation. Of course, the usual suspects were also upset over this too. A representative of Al Qaeda was quoted as stating, "How dare you eavesdrop on us while we're trying to kill all of you! We are outraged!"

Well, not really ... but you get the idea.

It took about two minutes of Internet research to learn that this practice goes all the way back to the days of Jimmy Carter. For almost 30 years, the president has had the constitutional authority to acquire foreign intelligence without a warrant or any other type of judicial blessing, and this has been acknowledged by courts and a number of administrations, both Republican and Democrat. Executive Orders of both presidents Carter and Clinton approved these intelligence efforts.

There's plenty of outrage these days about us violating the rights of terrorists, but where is all the outrage at disclosing National Security information? At press time, we learned that the Justice Department is going to investigate the leaks pertaining to government wiretapping and security programs. However, I doubt the big media will cover this leak investigation as closely as the one we saw involving Valerie Plane because there won't be any chance of nailing Karl Rove. "

Just remember: Bush said more attacks were "IMMINENT" (no, he didn't, but this was weeks' worth of MSM and blog-fueled mania); WMDs were the "only" justification for the Iraq War (forget 17 UN resolutions and an equal number of reasons in the bill approved by Congress... and the MSM does forget/ignore them b/c they know their consumers are too stupid to go read any primary source materials for themselves); W acted ... guffaw ... "unilaterally" in Iraq.

But acting "unilaterally" is exactly what he's "supposed" to do with North Korea, and stop waiting around for China, Japan and others to get involved. WTF? I thought Jimmy Carter solved the North Korea issue -- with Bill Clinton -- once and for all. :D

JP

I don't buy the whining. Besides, Krauthammer is self-admittedly in the neoconservative camp which, IMO, makes his objectivity on the Bush administration skewed. As Shaun's wonderful pic shows, the internet has just enabled all of you to have a global forum with which to whine. All presidents get skewered. Get over it.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1194972594.jpg

I still say Bush's single greatest error as President was saying suspected weapons of mass destruction were part (or as the media later spun, the ONLY part) of the justification for going to war. We were, as far as I know, justified as soon as Saddam violated the agreements which ended the first Gulf War. I think he threw in WMD as icing on the cake, to play off of fears a bit and gain some additional support. It backfired really hard on him, and had he stuck to his guns and went in under the obvious, concrete reasoning that already existed there would have been less of a fallout politically afterwards.

I stand by my media statements. However, the fodder that the media is using against Bush is a much bigger deal than Whitewater scandals or what-have-you. They are playing manipulator of data involving a war, and a mass-scale change of United States policy towards perceived terrorist threats, and misrepresentation of THIS stuff is a threat to the well-being of the world.

Typical, reasoned response, citing instances and providing countervailing arguments to those posed.

Can't deal with the message, attack the messenger.

Charlie is a neocon, so dismiss him.

Yeah. No interest in, or aptitude for, persuasion. Simply dismiss categorically.

Turn the knob 12.

JP

You're response is childish. I said he has the same political bent as the administration, so he might be biased. Your whole thread is about media bias. Once again, get over it. :rolleyes:

"Can't deal with the message, attack the messenger."

I'd rather keep having you make my point.

13, anyone?

Insert childish emoticon here.

JP

I'll go to 14 if it'll stop the whining. :)

Conflict

The story is always in the conflict..........according to current media standards.

Exploit the conflict even if you have to make it up or invent it.

I don't think Krauthammer agrees with the Bush admin. on even close to a majority of the issues. I've been reading his column every Friday for about the last 12 yrs. IIRC, he was once a speech writer for Jimmy Carter. He even wrote a column around 2001 supporting slavery reparations. He certainly has gone conservative in his old age though.

I LOVE Krauthammer. His opinions echo mine and are expressed far more eloquently.

And while I agree with the point about the media using conflict (or anything else) to sell their wares I also think they are overwhelmingly liberal. This has been extensively documented by the media themselves (see Poynter, PEW etc.)

A recent real world example is Hillary's hiring of Sandy Berger. On the very day this came to light the Washinton Post featured a front page above the fold puff piece about how Hillary is a "uniter". Berger's hiring was never reported- ever.

But I also think the Post wants Hillary elected because it will give them a wealth of stories and controversy to report. That 'ol Tiger Bill has not changed his stripes- and I bet they're salivating at the chance to follow him around town. And the local news? Love Juice at 11- Spunkmaster B snags some sweet stuff- and her mama likes him too.

Sounds like it all goes one way in your world. The labeling is a nice touch.

Look in the mirror. What you are doing seems to be exactly what you are accusing others of doing.

Where did the middle ground go in this country ? It surely exists, but nobody is willing to go there. Factoids have replaced facts, and opinions are based on the flavor of factoids that one prefers. Opinions have become the order of the day, and it seems more important that one feels strongly about one's beliefs than it does to ascertain the correctness of the basis of those views.

Of course most Democrats are idiots ! And Republicans are inherently corrupt. At the leadership level of course.
The truth is that reality is up for grabs, and the media at most levels seems to be incompetent at the job of sifting facts from factoids.

I believe it should be obvious that there are biases on both sides. But I also believe that there is a machinery driving a pupose . Obviously the Democrats are too disjointed as a whole to be able to do this, so that would leave Who ?

''Some call you the ruling elite, but I call you my base.''

Huh? Candidate Bush made this joke at the 2000 Al Smith dinner ("This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base"). Pretty funny. Gore's jokes were good too. What does it have to do with anything?

I used to look at that stuff & wonder, "Is this to keep people from noticing serious issues like the treasonous actions in the Loral Corp. scandal?"

I thought I already made a post that said exactly that. Looking back, I guess I didn't.

If that was his strategy, it sure was a bold one! :D :D :D

You boys are gonna need a set of these. Bold strategy indeed!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1195048886.jpg

+1 :)

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010861

The Insanity of Bush Hatred


crop

But Bush hatred is different. It's not that this time members of the intellectual class have been swept away by passion and become votaries of anger and loathing. Alas, intellectuals have always been prone to employ their learning and fine words to whip up resentment and demonize the competition. Bush hatred, however, is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene.

crop

Our politics suffer when passions overcome reason and vitriol becomes virtue.

crop


In short, Bush hatred is not a rational response to actual Bush perfidy. Rather, Bush hatred compels its progressive victims--who pride themselves on their sophistication and sensitivity to nuance--to reduce complicated events and multilayered issues to simple matters of good and evil. Like all hatred in politics, Bush hatred blinds to the other sides of the argument, and constrains the hater to see a monster instead of a political opponent.

Prof. Starr shows in "Freedom's Power" that tolerance, generosity, and reasoned skepticism are hallmarks of the truly liberal spirit. His analysis suggests that the problem with progressives who have succumbed to Bush hatred is not their liberalism; it's their betrayal of it................ crop

Were you and Frogger at the punch bowl when that was taken? :D

Just a question...

But doesn't the President reduce things to stark black-and-white arguments, simplifying complex problems to impossibly simplistic solutions?

This may not be altogether wrong, but I can understand why it infuriates people who see the world as a very complicated place, not reducable to "one price fits all" solutions.

What I worry about more than anything else is the cost in blood and treasure we are expending as the world's police force. Perhaps necessary, but sooner or later, like the constant dripping of water on a rock, it will wear us away.

I had the lamp shade on, thank you. :p