Down where I come from, there's a saying, "Don't start believing your own bulls---." Inelegant and vulgar, but it definitely gets the point across perfectly: Salesmanship and spinning have their place, but keep the real facts in mind when you're planning your actions. As I sit and reflect upon the recent Iraqi elections and the partisan responses to those elections here in the U.S., I can't help but wonder whether large segments of the American Left have failed to take that advice to heart. Has the Left created an environment in which it is doomed to believe its own . . . hype?
There are obviously exceptions to the generalizations I'm about to make. If you count yourself among those exceptions, please don't waste bandwidth explaining how not everyone of the Left is like that. I get it. Still, events of the past two weeks suggest yet again that a huge chunk of the Left is basing their worldview on "information" the Left itself has reported, edited, massaged, and spun, much to their detriment. This is especially true of Iraq.
And a few "dittoheads" and Coulterites notwithstanding, this is NOT as big a problem for the rational Right. Between the market economics driving "if it bleeds, it leads" reporting decisions and the leftward/Democratic tilt of most non-Fox primary news sources, the Right's primary opponent is defeatism, and its positions are constantly challenged in print, over the airwaves, and on the digital ether. The net result: The Right is forced time and again to test its ideas and positions in the white-hot crucible of public debate.
What do I mean? Simply this: The Left cannot afford to believe its own spin if it plans to remain a viable force in American politics. Moreover, the media cannot serve two masters. It's either Truth or Persuasion, not both.
A couple of weeks ago, President Bush delivered his second inaugural address. He spoke boldly and (for him) eloquently about the advance of freedom across the world, and the role America should and would play in paving the way. Although he did not mention Iraq or Afghanistan by name, those two nations were the context and subtext of his speech; they were at the very heart of his message.
From the Left's perspective, it was both surpassingly odd and oddly fortuitous that he would make such bold pronouncements about American policy on the eve of Iraqi elections. Those elections, we had been assured by press and pundits, were doomed to violent and bloody failure. How easy it would be to discredit the entirety of Bush's message when the inevitable empty polling places and mountains of body bags gave the lie to his disingenuous promise to deliver liberty to the Iraqi people.
That's not quite what happened, is it? There is a LONG way to go before Iraq is truly free, truly democratic, or truly peaceful. But even the Left is acknowledging that Sunday's relatively peaceful and undeniably successful elections may represent the start of something big. And bits and pieces of the Left are admitting, albeit in furtive whispers, that their dire assumptions were a little out of line with reality.
Why is that? In part, it's because the Left believed its own B.S. Although there is no Supreme Coordinated Council for the Advancement of the Leftwing Agenda (just like there's no "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy), individual agents of the left among the media made the conscious decision to use their bully pulpits to influence events. And their efforts weren't limited to the OpEd pages. Instead, they pulled out the big guns. They used their ostensibly objective news reporting to paint a uniformly bleak and cynical picture of rampant violence and utter chaos throughout the whole of Iraq. They were aided and abetted by the conventional market wisdom that negative news sells papers. As a result, the vast majority of news organizations reporting from Iraq fed the American public and the world a steady diet of doom and gloom.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. The notion that journalism has a longstanding tradition of utter objectivity is a myth, plain and simple. Journalism has long been the province of provocateurs and pimps, and although it has made strides toward evenhandedness, editorial viewpoint always has been and always will be a feature of every page and pixel. I have no problem with a biased press, beyond the fact that I wish they'd just own up to it. Deceptive claims of objectivity are the real danger, not the subjectivity they mask.
Problem is, many on the Left have apparently forgotten that the news apparatus they use as a weapon cannot simultaneously serve Truth, except in rare cases. It's one thing to use Reuters, the BBC, CNN, the New York Times, AFP, AP,and other organs to sell your viewpoint. It's another thing entirely to convince yourself that those organs are incapable of selling anything other than the Truth. The Left has clearly engaged in the latter course of action with respect to the elections in Iraq, and they seem befuddled by the millions of upraised, inkstained fingers raised in defiance of their cynicism.
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