UPDATE: I changed the title in an attempt to generate some traffic. Nothing but the title was changed.
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In this, my second diary on Charlie Pierce's book, "Idiot America", I want to highlight two of his analyses, which are fundamental to how political discourse in America has been poisoned. The two media artifacts he analyzes are "the narrative" and "conspiracy theory vs real conspiracies".
These two analyses implicitly refer to his The Three Great Premises of Idiot America, which I discussed in last diary. That is, they are about the reduction of journalism to "moving units". From this angle, he lays out the fundamental blurring that has been used to label any inconvenient reporting of fact or evidence as mere "conspiracy theory", while at the same time presenting propaganda "narrative" as fact.
To paraphrase Orwell, "propaganda narration - good; evidence for real conspiracies - bad".
For ease of reference, here are the premises again:
- Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.
- Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.
- Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.
1. The Iraq War - How the propaganda "narrative" triumphed over reality
I have yet to meet a progressive who does not think that the disastrous war and occupation of Iraq was the result of multiple secret plans (i.e., real conspiracies). I have yet to meet a progressive who does not think that Faux News was the propaganda ministry of the Bush Administration, putting out disinformation, lies, and hate speech in support of war abroad and police state tactics at home.
How is it then that (with the pathetic exception of the immediately pardoned commuted sentence given to Scooter Libby) no high official has been prosecuted, much less convicted, for his role in War Crimes, violations of the duties of occupying powers, violations of the Constitution, and massive fraud and incompetence by no-bid contractors? How is it that no corporate news organization is willing to analyze the motivation for the constant stream of lies emanating from Faux News? Do progressives believe that no "real conspiracies" went into the selling and operation of our ill-fated misadventure in Iraq?
Of course not. They have been screaming for investigations for years. Story after story lays out the details of the conspiracy - feeding lies to the media via mouthpieces like Judith Miller, torturing captives to elicit false confessions, using those confessions as "evidence" of Iraq's WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda, invading a country that posed no threat to us, illegally imposing a set of WTO-style laws on that occupied country, attempting to loot their oil while failing to provide basic security for the physical assets of the country. The whole, rotten, real conspiracy is there for anyone to see. Ditto for the massive illegal wiretapping, and for the "enemy combatant" dungeon that is still in place even after two SCOTUS decisions that it is unconstitutional.
But, for the first five years of the Bizarro World of "faith-based" imperial politics, a substantial minority of America thought all the above was nothing more than "conspiracy theory" by disgruntled "liberals". And, the corporate media catapulted the propaganda for the most massive "deception by false narration" ever pulled off. Mr. Pierce lays out how they did it:
Novelizations are so preposterous an idea that they only could have been hatched as an art form here. They are based on the assumption that people will read a book that fills in the gaps of the screenplay of a movie they've already seen. A novelization is pure commerce, a salesman's delight...As art, novelizations are almost completely worthless. As commerce, they make perfect sense. They are creatures of the First Great Premise, by which anything has value if it moves units...
The pursuit of the presidency is now a contest of narratives...The successful narrative is judged only by how well it sells...The Iraq War happened because the people who'd wanted it all along were uniquely positioned to create a narrative about why it should happen...Events were becoming novelized, and the wrong people were filling in the elided details; the relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq, which didn't exist in fact, existed within the prevailing narrative...Public opinion...was in no condition to set any limits whatsoever. It needed a narrative, and the people who were selling the war gave the country what screenwriters call a through-line, from Ground Zero through Kabul to Baghdad...
The (Yellowcake) letter that helped start the war was a clumsy, obvious fake. Skeptics with firsthand knowledge of Niger - such as (Ambassador Joseph) Wilson - found the transaction as described in the letter implausible...It was probably the most consequential forgery since the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and people all over the United States government knew it...
The narrative had triumphed. Reality had been richly novelized with details that people made up to fill in the inconvenient gaps in the actual story. A forgery had been used to reinforce untruth and wishful thinking, and the people selling it had been able to do so with full confidence that the people they were taking to war by and large hadn't been paying attention to their government...
...just as was the case with the intelligence that hled to the war, experts within government who were dubious about the prospects of a short, easy occupation were ignored, marginalized, or, in several cases, attacked and forced to resign...
"You start with the presumption that you already know the answer prior to asking the question. When information surfaces that contradicts your firmly entrenched views, you dismantle the institution that brought you the information."
What is most glaring in these real conspiracies is the amount of effort that goes into creating phony evidence, destroying genuine evidence, intimidating, firing, or character assassinating people and organizations that get in the way of doctoring evidence, spreading a cloak of "security" to hide under, and generally preventing people from finding out what is going on.
The difference between a real conspiracy and a conspiracy theory or a propaganda narrative comes down to credible evidence. And Cheney's team were the masters at destroying, contaminating, and bureaucratically disappearing the evidence of their crimes. As the old saying goes: you don't have to be a genius to get away with murder; you just have to be in charge of the investigation. Despite all of their efforts, enough honest people in high places (including John Ashcroft) have refused to be silenced. From their "testimony", we have learned the outline, the players, and many of the details of the massive criminal conspiracy called the Bush Administration.
But, still, there are no prosecutions of any member of the Bush crime family. Hell, we can't even stop Haliburton from getting performance bonuses for electrocuting our soldiers. Governor Don Siegelman still stands convicted by means of massive US attorney corruption, while Ted Stevens gets a pardon. The point is that, from a legal perspective, nothing has changed. No laws have been passed that would prevent the next GOP/fascist-front adminstration from picking up where Cheney left off. The entire infrastructure that Bush put in place is still humming along, as Obama uses it to fight more wars (Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan). The total black budget for intelligence and covert ops stands at more than $50 Billion a year, and we have no idea what operations are being carried out inside the US, against American citizens. We are still paying massive amounts of money for mercenaries that could just as easily deployed to a "crisis" inside the US. (I refuse to use the euphemism "contractors".)
I am still waiting for Attorney General Holder to do one thing that convinces me that he will investigate and prosecute high officials that were involved in massive crimes - crimes that are currently being investigated by a judge in Spain, a country that knows something about fascism. Until then, I will do my best to expose real conspiracies.
The biggest obstacle to exposing real conspiracies is the media filter that reduces any accusation about high crimes to nothing more than a conspiracy theory. This tactic has been incrementally developed since the assassinations of the 1960s; and it is the subject of Mr. Pierce's other analysis.
2. How "conspiracy theories" became a freak show
Mr. Pierce does us the great service of pointing out that the history behind the conversation-stopping accusation of "conspiracy theory" is as outdated as the canard of the "liberal media".
Modern conservatism...did more than anything else to devalue traditional American conspiracy theories. People who held to the old conspiracies did so because they knew something important was at stake. They considered the government something of value. That's why the anti-Masons were so hell-bent on exposing the Masons who were running government.
But to the supply-siders, and to the movement behind them, the government is not worth the trouble...movement conservatism is a style, not a philosophy, and the government is merely a performance space. Thus, conservative conspiracies have lost their essential lunatic tanginess. If you've made yourself rich and powerful deriding the government, what do you care if some shadowy cabal is running it, as long as it's not also running the corporations who fund your research?
(The supply siders) don't care if (their opponent) is right. Their theory is valid because it has made them money and sold itself successfully. The facts are what they believe, and the truth depends on how fervently they believe it.
Mr. Pierce's analyses reinforce each other. The idea that "government is merely a performance space" goes hand-in-hand with the active creation of propaganda narratives and the stigmatization of the term CT. Both concepts reflect the fact that the modern "conservative" movement really despises genuine democracy and the efforts of determined citizens (today labeled as CTers) to protect that democracy. They see democracy as something to be looted and trashed for their benefit. They intend to transform America from a nation of laws to a nation of men and of corporations. When the GOP control the government, they use it to do terrible things, which they can later use to "narrate" the reasons why government doesn't work.
All of this depends on their control of the narrative, which depends on their control of the corporate media, which runs on Pierce's Three Premises:
(Conspiracy theories) tumble into Idiot America when they are locked solely into the Three Great Premises, when they are used merely to move units, and when they're limited to those people who believe them fervently enough to say them loudly on televison.
In the corporate media, CT is only argued, it is never debated. People shouting at each other is good TV. People rationally working their way through a huge body of evidence full of deliberate misinformation and omission and ass-covering is too complicated, too boring. Its not good TV for Idiot America.
Given the above, there is a real danger that a generation raised from birth in the phony media bubble will buy the defaced version of American history on offer. I mean, how many twenty year olds understand the ultimately unsuccessful, fifteen year long fight to put a leash on the CIA - a fight that began with the JFK assassination and ended with the Church Commission? All that is left of the truth of that era is the rock-steady poll statistic that the majority of Americans simply do not believe the Warren Commission report. But, if the new generation eats the McDonald's happy meal version of that history, then the CIA and the Bush Gang have won.
3. Real Conspiracies in the 1960s and 70s
The first thing we must do to bring CT back from merely a dismissive label is to get people to acknowledge that there is a hell of lot of real conspiracy in politics. Earlier, I pointed to the massive dungball of Iraq today. There is also the US Attorney scandal, the electronic voting conspiracy, the "caging list" voter disenfranchisement. These are all real conspiracies.
But, all the evidence for these conspiracies can be stopped cold by the anachronistic and untrue propaganda narrative that anyone who sees things differently than the government is some kind of kook. Fifty years ago, that simply wasn't the way things were.
Consider Dallas, the nexus of distrust that became the template for modern political paranoia, and consider that, while Kennedy was president, the executive branch was a writhing ball of snakes. A memo has survived in which the JCS seriously suggest blowing up John Glenn on the launch-pad in order to concoct a casus belli for invading Cuba again. Consider that this lunacy made it all the way up the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense before someone finally turned it off...
It turns out there were actually conspiracies going on throughout the brief history of the Kennedy administration. It was a fertile time for conspiracy, since so many things seemed to be changing all at once.
In spite of the facts that almost all the credible evidence was sanitized, that many key witnesses (most specifically, Oswald) were conveniently dead, and that a farrago of charges and counter-charges and agents provocateur had thorougly muddied the water, people at that time were smart enough to know they'd been fed a steaming pile of crap. Some of those people still speak out, and if they stick to the credible evidence, they cannot be dismissed as kooks.
Outline of Evidence for the JFK Assassination is a thread that was ranked #1 on the Greatest page of Democratic Underground less than ten days ago. There was no effective refutation of this recital of credible evidence. And, if the corporate media operated the way the Internet does, a lot of other evidence wouldn't wind up on page 50 of the Saturday edition of the NY Times.
The creation of Idiot America is the result of a tactic stumbled upon by the powers that be back in the 1970s. The tactic is to destroy credible evidence by destroying the concept of credibility. To destroy the faith that experts know what they are talking about. To elevate paid cranks and deliberate frauds to equal status with experts.
The rise of Idiot America today reflects - for profit, mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power - the breakdown of the consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people we should trust the least are the people who know best what they're talking about. In the new media age, everyone is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worse thing you can be in a society where everyone is an expert is, well, an actual expert.
Once people are unable to reason their way out of a paper bag, you can use the same argument for two completely opposite purposes; and no idiot will bat an eye. For example:
A higher percentage of Americans believes that a government conspiracy killed John F. Kennedy than believes in intelligent design, but there's no great push to "teach the debate" about what happened in Dallas in the nation's history classes.
4. Conspiracy theory as mass entertainment
As I said at the beginning, the key blurring has been the distinction between a conspiracy theory and a real conspiracy. Depending on the label you apply, you will either be passively entertained by or actively motivated by the evidence in front of you. I cannot beat Mr. Pierce's exposition, but I must excerpt it:
...the reality is that we have kept the Kennedy assassination as a conspiracy theory, rather than accepting it as an actual conspiracy. Once we believe in the latter, it becomes a deadening weight on the conscience. It loses its charm. Accepting it as reality means we probably are obligated to do something about it, and that we have chosen, en masse, not to.
The revelation of an actual conspiracy - the Iran-Contra matter, say, - has come to have a rather deadening effect on American politics and culture. It runs through stages. There is disbelief. Then the whole thing dies in banality. It's too hard to understand, and its Just One More Damn Thing that proves not that something called "government" is controlled by a secret conspiracy, but that "government' itself is the conspiracy. This is commonplace and boring, and it leads to distrust and to apathy, and not, as it is supposed to do, to public outrage and reform...
The JFK conspiracy sells, so it remains nothing more than mass entertainment. Dealey Plaza functions as a performance venue. Considering Dallas means that, for more than forty years, we have believed the unthinkable and gone right on with our lives...But it ends there, in Dealey Plaza...It wasn't always so. The country once managed to make actual conspiracies, and the theories that attend them, work in concert in such a way that our appetite for the grotesque was satisfied, our appetite for hidden knowledge was sated, and, most important of all, our appetite for freedom was sharpened...
The isolation of conspiracy theories as mere commercial commodities, tightly circumscribed within the Three Great Premises, has not been a good thing. It has forced upon conspiracy theories the role of history's great patent-medicine show. The creative imagination in them never crosses over into what's glibly described as the real world. How different America would look if people generally applied it to what every poll says they believe about what happened in Dealey Plaza?
In my first diary on IA, I pointed to the similarities between Pierce and Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death". We seem to have come full circle here. The threats to the Republic found in the countless real conspiracies - from the 1960s, through Iran-Contra/BCCI, up to the Iraq War charade - have been reduced to, in Pierce's words, "mass entertainment".
We are literally amusing ourselves to death.