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May 2, 2007Broder, Eric Hoffer, inauthenticity and other thoughts - UPDATED:::SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE::: Reading this piece about how the Democrats in the Senate banded together to throw their skirts over their faces and weep and wag fingers at David Broder (for the crime of daring to criticize one of them), I am reminded of Eric Hoffer’s remark in his book The True Believer:
Which reminds me of Ed Morrissey’s observation that Democrats and leftists either ignore or willfully “forget” or simply prefer their own “truthy” alternative to the actual things that were said and done about four years ago:
Aw, it doesn’t matter if the narrative has holes in it - as long as people want to believe something, and the press wants them to believe it - it doesn’t really matter what someone actually said or did. So what if Bush said we’d be in for a long, hard slog in Iraq? He really said “Mission Accomplished” so we should be out of there, already. Isn’t that right? So what if fire routinely melts steel at 2500 degrees - that’s not real science, look at the pictures!…or something. So what if no one has been able to empirically prove that humanity is causing global warming - that’s real science…or at least it’s the narrative. As Hillary once famously said, “you don’t have to fall in love, just fall in line.” Fall in line with the narrative, and it becomes your truth. In our enlightened, post-modern era, we’ve moved waaaay beyond something as quaint as objective truth. Truth is now pretty much whatever you want to believe. If you want to believe that the economy is horrible, despite continued, sustained growth, (what are we up to, now, ten quarters of it?) low unemployment numbers and expanding manufacturing, why that’s fine. If you don’t like thinking that Harry Reid’s land deals deserve looking at, why…they don’t! Move along, creatures, move along. A few people, however, are starting to look around and are saying, “well…I might be a Democrat, but that doesn’t mean I have to swallow this crapola.” Or they’re saying, “just because we replaced feckless Republicans with you, that doesn’t mean we told you to demoralize and undercut the troops and leave the Iraqi people to a bloody fate. Or to screw around for your personal gain” They’re saying, “how is it Israel is the bad guy when Hamas - whom we fund like mad - is saying they want to kill all Americans?” They’re saying “what’s this nonsense about some churches needing to get with the times, when the ones that embrace modernity are imploding and the church set most palpably in the 8th century is the one being pandered to, left and right? What’s up with that?” What some people are actually starting to say is: “When the evidence of something is right in front of my face, why do you insist on telling me that what I am seeing is not what is real, that what I am hearing is not really being said, that what my own reason can sensibly deduce makes no sense? Stop telling me I don’t know what I’m encountering and that my reason is faulty. Stop telling me that the Bush White House “outted” Valerie Plame to punish Joe Wilson, when your own boy Richard Armitage admitted to doing the job. Stop telling me he lied to us about yellowcake while neglecting to mention that the Butler report confirmed the intelligence. Cease this nonsense that everyone loved America until 2003. For the love of Pete, don’t tell me George Tenet is saying something other than yes, Saddam did have WMD. Stop feeding me bullshit narratives that have barely a nodding acquaintance with the truth, because it’s starting to seriously piss me off!” Yep. That’s what folks are saying, bad language and all. It’s not a lot of voices, but there are a few. Some of them are even saying, “okay, I’ve loved my orgasm for 30+ years; when do I get to feel fulfilled and empowered, and what about this nagging feeling I have that my mind and my body - and sex itself ought to be connected to something bigger, dare I say, sacred?” People are saying it, but softly…if they really want to stop a forward momentum that is really starting to veer out of control…they’d better start saying it louder, and more often. :::UPDATE: Instapundit brings us a prime example of completely false, erroneous, history-revisionist bullcrap being passed off as “fact” by the press, and simply absorbed into the “truthy” narrative. I don’t even know how many times we’ve had to repeat the fact that the US (the whole congress, with not even house president Al Gore dissenting) rejected the treaty under PRESIDENT CLINTON. And oh, yeah, Bush has begun put something successful up in it’s place, dammit. I’m starting to get really pissed off with the Bush Administration for their inability or disinterest in fighting their own battles. We should not have to be doing this over and over, setting the record straight again and again. The WH needed to get out in front of this stupid narrative right away, instead of letting it settle in like kudzu. I know they have a mountain of disinformation to combat every day…but dammit, this is getting me really riled up, now. Doesn’t the WH have SOME responsibility for insuring that history doesn’t get re-written on their watch? Jimmie at Sundries Shack writes it better than I do, go check him out! No…I’m not in a bad mood today. But I’m really weary of reading the same distortions over and over again. And I’m tired of the double standards. Hopeful idiot that I am, I’m still waiting for the press to become half as interested in John Kerry’s murky military records as they were in Dubya’s. But my patience is wearing thin. Shrinkwrapped has more, including this link to a good Thomas Sowell piece, today. WELCOME: Instapundit readers. While you’re here, please look around. Today we’re also talking about how Socialism doesn’t work and wondering about painless coups. We’re also reviewing a couple of books and wondering at St. Catherine’s appreciation of manly men. http://theanchoressonline.com/2007/05/02/broder-eric-hoffer-inauthenticity-and-other-thoughts/trackback/ 17 Responses to “Broder, Eric Hoffer, inauthenticity and other thoughts - UPDATED” |
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:06 pm
It wasn’t written to make you feel less weary - but you might want to wander on over and read what I wrote about you today. Hopefully, it will uplift your spirits a bit.
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:08 pm
http://savkobabe.blogspot.com/2007/05/anchoress-appreciation-sometimes-you.html
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:48 pm
This is my rule for today: “If ten thousand people do a silly thing, it is still a silly thing.” Opus the Penguin
Yes, I’ve gone there.
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:32 pm
This is why I call them Plastic Turkey Democrats.
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:01 pm
– What some people are actually starting to say is: “When the evidence of something is right in front of my face, why do you insist on telling me that what I am seeing is not what is real, that what I am hearing is not really being said, that what my own reason can sensibly deduce makes no sense? –
They do it because it works, and for no other reason. I define “works” here to mean that it wins them enough allegiants to achieve their electoral goals.
Big Lie technique, as awful as it is to contemplate, really does work. It might have something to do with the will to believe (William James), or it might be pure conditioning, but in politics results are all that matter. Which explains a lot about Americans’ disgust for politics, doesn’t it?
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:31 pm
“The WH needed to get out in front of this stupid narrative right away, instead of letting it settle in like kudzu.”
The problem is that it is a game of cat and mouse with a HUGE supply of mice. The White House can’t possibly read through every single publication every single day and respond to every single lie, there are just too many of them.
Even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to get the media to carry the rebuttal so people would still not hear about it. If Reuters says Bush killed our Kyoto membership and the administration shows them that they are wrong, you think Reuters is going to publish that fact? Not a chance.
The media has simply become junk. No wonder people are turning away from it.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:03 pm
I understand why you’re p.o.’d at the Bush Administration - I share your frustration.
Neither the Democrats nor the press is going to let the facts get in the way of “the story” - they’re the opposition, but this Administration won’t treat them accordingly.
Why, for example, doesn’t anyone bemoan the Senate Majority Leader implying that our commanding general in Iraq would lie? How else are we to take Reid’s statement that he wouldn’t believe Petraeus if he said his forces were having any success?
Why not say “We have not lost in Iraq and we will not lose unless the Democrats in Congress succeed in their efforts to insist upon our surrender?” Why not call Pelosi’s trip to Syria foolish?
All this “change the tone” crappola has accomplished is the Administration’s unilateral disarmament in the political wars. IMO, our nation needs more, not less, “partisanship” - Both the Administration and Congressional Republicans need to come out of their “battered politician” crouch, stop with their “please make it go away, please make it go away, please make it go away” prayers and defend their beliefs.
If, that is, they still have any.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Doesn’t the WH have SOME responsibility for insuring that history doesn’t get re-written on their watch?
Except that “history” isn’t simply written in one place that the WH can control. Memes die hard regardless of how much they are countered. Now the WH has not done a good job of communicating. But we can’t hold them responsible for every silly story that crosses the wires. We all have a responsibility to history. Isn’t that what the net and blogs are patly about?
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Can they be responsible for minding SOME of it??
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:45 am
[...] The Anchoress is unhappy, with Bush: Iâm starting to get really pissed off with the Bush Administration for their inability or [...]
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:36 am
[...] 3rd, 2007 Yesterday, the Anchoress wrote of her disappointment with current political reality (on reading her post, it is clear that it is [...]
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:32 am
[...] We all get weary, after all. [...]
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:23 am
Reuters: Lying and Whitewashing Mass Murder, All to Save the Earth!…
I saw a story last night that got a note from Glenn Reynolds but I honestly couldn’t comment on it because it made me angry. I needed a little cool-down time to ponder what, exactly, has become of Reuters.
The story is here. It is a brief but glo…
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:57 am
[...] We all get weary, after all. Sphere: Related Content [...]
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:31 pm
The Dems specialize in rewriting history. In fact, I’ve talked to some that have literally wiped out events from their mind that don’t fit their world view. I had a co-worker tell me that the UN did not pass a single resolution against Iraq prior to the war. I was speechless.
If you’d like to see where they are headed with their revisions this time around, take a look at what they did to Richard Nixon. He is portrayed as power hungry, yet voluntarily gave up power twice (first when he refused to contend the illegal votes in the Kennedy/Nixon presidential campaign and secondly over Watergate.) I confess that I was never a Nixon fan, but I found the book “The Contender” by Irwin Gellman compelling.
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:53 pm
When Your In It You Can’t See It?…
I have been saying this about more then this Kyoto reference for a LONG TIME!
Do you think the administration doesn’t see what is happening or have they just given up? Like I said before they seem to have gone AWOL when we need them the most. I WI….
May 4th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Love the fire, Anchoress!