Perception Trumps Reality

GOP talking points have infected my conspecifics at the office. It’s not lying the country into war that’s the problem; it’s pointing out the lying. What’s worse than running prison camps that invite comparisons to gulags? Comparing them to gulags. Mismanaging the war in Iraq is nowhere near as bad as telling people about the mismanagement. Don’t mention the pattern of fraud and abuse in contracting in Iraq lest that comfort the enemy, but the fraud itself is not problematic.

If the press would just stop reporting that the war, or any other thing the Bush crime family is up to, was going badly, the people would not know it was going badly and Bush’s poll numbers would stop falling. To the GOP, it’s not about winning the war; it’s about being at war. Bush is a “war president”, and that’s supposed to insulate him from criticism. It is not fair to require him to get the war right. That defeats the whole purpose of the ‘war deflects all criticism’ plan.

One of my GOP conspecifics actually said that he thought Bush had failed as a leader because he did not ask the people to sacrifice in the war. He said it as if it were something that was making the rounds among Republicans. Where is that coming from? Is the idea that the war will be a better seller if people are invested in it personally? Isn’t the magnetic ribbon sacrifice enough? And the massive debt that we will be taxed to pay?

I recall a “dialogue” with the fascists at RedState last year in which one of the regulars argued that criticizing the war hurts the troops. He felt that this was morally worse than putting the troops in harm’s way in the first place or in making stupid decisions that got them killed, and he pointed to Vietnam as an example of how spreading bad news about a war could lead to defeat. So, the blunders in Vietnam did not lead to defeat; reporting on them did? I reckon by this logic the US would be “winning” in Iraq if the press would start reporting that it was.

Hmm. This is probably "true", in the neo-con sense of the word.