Perhaps the most astute statement President Clinton ever made was: "Keep your enemies close." Bush, while not a tenth the thinker, has a feral and instinctive grip on the corollary of this concept, which Clinton missed: "...but let your friends and relatives roam far afield." The Rothschild family developed the art of sending trusted operatives out into the world, but the Bush family hasn't failed to learn their lesson.
Jeb Bush is running Florda - a happy circumstance which led, ultimately, to King George "losing the election before he 'won' it." Paul Wolfowitz is now far away at the World Bank - the interest on that expenditure of capital is looking good...
And Dan Senor is at... huh? What's that you ask? You don't remember Senor? Why he's... the topic on the flip.
I'm sorry, where was I? Oh yes - Dan Senor. Well, as Andrew Orlowski of The Register reported back in May, he was
hired by Google, as their VP of Global Communications and Strategy. He's noted as:
...former Senior Associate at the Carlyle Group, Senor was briefly Scott McLellan's [emphases mine] deputy as White House spokesman before becoming head of the the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq's information department. [snip...] While in Iraq Senor showed his loyalty by going jogging in a Bush-Cheney '04 tracksuit.
Impressive. Now why is that important?
Is there anything more important than information? And you, over there sir, where do you go for your information, these days? Ahh, Google.
Now tell me this, madam - yes you there, with the doubting look - of all the information there is in the world, what is the most important category of it, to those who wield, or crave to wield, power? Well, I'll tell you: it's the knowledge of exactly what information your enemies are trying to discover!
So essentially, if you have Google in your pocket, you have an advantage over your adversaries that's almost like mind-reading. It's easy to stay one step ahead of anyone (or any group) when you already know, if only statistically, what they're thinking - because you know what information they're after. Of course, I would never suggest for a moment that our president would ever so much as contemplate using Senor - a man in the private sector! - to gather information for his party (and his plans for all we little folk). Nor would it cross my beautiful mind that Google itself could be in any way complicit in such a Machiavellian scheme, in the unlikely event that such an idea were true - which, of course, it isn't. After all; their corporate motto is: "Don't Be Evil." But still...
...sorta cheating, ain't it? Oh well, we're all realists here - that's just how the game of power-politics is played, right? Unless...
Well, yeah, you guessed it - it appears to get much more interesting.
One month after Senor was hired, in June, this article showed up in The Guardian. Those boys move quick. And I gotta tell you, that thing slid away faster than a Recent Diary on a homepage set to 20. Just try finding it with an average bunch of search terms... (you might try Google). What Google is doing, is filtering hits for the 'truth.' Who decides what the truth is? Why they do. Here's the money quote:
The company insists its only motive is to help users make sense of the morass of information on the web. But some worry about the cultural influence of everything being filtered through the Google lens, particularly if it emerges as the arbiter of "truth" on the web.
What does this all mean? Consider the nature of honor. Well, it's rather difficult to find these days - but what the heck; let's give it a try...
Google this: honorable republican. Well, well. A bunch of honorable Republicans pop up. Seems reasonable.
Now try Googling this: honorable democrat. And again - a bunch of... wait a minute! That's not right! It's all snark and sarcasm... The only Democrat called honorable, without snark, is... Zell Miller???
So tell me, gentle reader - as you cruise the 'net from day to day, seeking out one more small piece of dirt to add to the Everest-like mountain of filth that will be George Bush's legacy - are you proud of your immunity to the spin presented by the BushCo administration? Do you question everything they say? Do you always check every fact they present to us: with a couple of quick hits on... Google? Hmmm?
Fascinating, what one can do with technology.
Isn't it?
Google: Filtering for the Truth, since 2004.
JF