Carpe Datum

World Still Not Flat

As Atrios has put it so well, the latest reports of the 9/11 commission aren't surprising: There is still no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Now now, not in the past, nothing has changed. It's still bullshit, and it always has been bullshit, despite the paranoid fantasies dreamed up by neoconservatives to justify the Iraq invasion. Just a couple of days ago, Cheney was talking at a fundraiser, and he said there was a link as if it were some obvious fact that the liberal media is hiding from everyone.

You know, if it weren't so damned representative of everything about these clods, I wouldn't bother with it. What they're trying to do is obvious: people like Cheney are using conservative outlets to talk around the mainstream media outlets with a wink and a nod at the base. The mainstream media isn't conservative enough for them, they figure, because they won't just directly transmit every single fucking lie that passes their lips.

And the nutballs out there lap it up. Worse, the Moron Americans (who see themselves as "centrists" without seeing that Republicans have moved the definition of "centrist" so far to the right as to be ridiculous) see stories like this and think, "Huh, well, the 9/11 commission may have reported that there's no link, and that may be what the media is saying, but they just want to bash Bush, so they're probably lying." Without objective facts, without verifiable (and falsifiable) ideas, the debate over what's right and what's wrong simply cannot move forward.

And that, of course, is the goal. Keep them confused. Keep them afraid. Keep enough of them home that they can steal another election. That's why the issue of media bias is so important. There has to be an objective and trustworthy source of information. Otherwise, all of politics is just "he said, she said" nonsense and people vote based on fear, emotion and irrationality instead of logic and reason.

The people who keep screaming liberal media bias in the general direction of the New York Times (which has a breaking story about Kerry having a butler or a "patrician manner" on the front page every other day) are well aware of these issues. That's why they are just plain evil, malevolent liars. Ask yourself what they have to gain by undermining your confidence in what little factual, useful, objective reporting exists out there.

These are the kind of people in power right now. And they're trolling for fools again this November.

Posted by Observer at June 16, 2004 02:03 PM