Think Tanks Spin Tanks?

"Think Tanks", such as the Brooking Institute, American Security Council, American Defense International, American Enterprise Institute are powerful opinion (propaganda) institutions enabled by money from corporate donors and significantly are based at centers of power, such as Washington DC, where they have quick and ready access to our law makers and representatives.

They are advocates for the power elite in this country, and abroad, and have for many years have had influence over our lives and government policy. We have been thinking along their political and economic lines like puppets on strings.

The American public has been spoon-fed, compliments of a duplicitious media, their ideas, which have become ours over time.

At times reality sinks in that certain actions we have been advised to take are wrong we are then fed elaborate excuses and given new paths to follow.

The American people take great pride in their form of government, that we have a representative government, a democracy, but it is one only by definition for the American people are more like puppets on strings, manipulated very cleverly by the Elite through their bought and paid for propaganda mills.

As more and more voices are heard, through independent blogs, the elitists will become alarmed at the prospect of losing their control of ideas and will begin proposing actions to stifle discourse through the internet.

The danger of think tanks, besides their proximity and access to power, is their pseudo-intellectual authority and legitimacy. Their scholarship is questionable yet the media calls on their "experts" on a regular basis to discuss popular issues, thus giving them prestige in the eyes of the public.

Political party supporters have used them to get around campaign donation limits. Think tanks are convenient outlets for political propaganda, which is their purpose anyway.

The only "peer review" process that takes place about their "scholarship" is counter propaganda from opposing think tanks. Actually the euphamism "think tank" should be "spin tank", for little real scholarly thinking takes place, in my judgement, as there is little balance to most of their conclusions.

Bush's Speech of June 28, 2005

Just more of the same propaganda and pseudo solutions to problems--We'll solve the problem by solving the problem. If you have heard one of his speeches you have heard basically them all.
His propaganda ploy--juxtaposition--of mentioning 9/11 with the war in Iraq is obvious and shows how desperate his policy is becoming.
The slogan--it is better to be fighting terrorists in Iraq than on the streets of America--is just that, a slogan. The administration and apologists brag about how well they have been doing in protecting America, that their efforts are working yet claim that if they hadn't attacked Iraq and deposed Saddam we would be fighting here. A real lame-brained argument with no substance.
The real problem I see is that the Bush administration does not have a clue about the origins of terrorism we are fighting. They try to paint the problem as being one of a dangerous ideology intent on taking over the world and doing away with democracy. It, the war, is about a regional nationalism, a cultural clash, an Arab "Monroe Doctrine" if you will and we, the US and other Western Nations, are transgressors. What we can expect in the future is more and more resistance to our presence from Arabs all over the Middle East. There is no end in sight, not as long as we remain in the region militarily.
There was no mention of a plan, unless you consider saying we are going to continue to blunder our way as before and hope they Arabs and Iraqis tire of the fight. When you consider that they strap on vests to kill us, while we strap on vests that hopefully will save us, you have to wonder who is more committed to the fight?
Bush speaks of all the building going on in Iraq, yet what with all the bombings and military actions there seems to be more destruction than rebuilding going on. The military has a heavy foot print and there are "tracks" all over Iraq. One might wonder what is the price tag going to be--at least someone in our government should be asking that question?

Bush's "Words"

Often, while listening to G.W. Bush's speeches, I noted the propagandistic nature of the words he used--glittering generalities, virtue words, name-calling, labels, demonizing, slogans--and the lack of substance of the speeches in general. By that I mean when you eliminate all the emotionally charged words there was little left that could be considered a message or information.
From the web site "BushCountry.org" I obtained copies of his speeches to examine, to see how he could say very little, yet leave everyone with the impression that he had made a marvelous and substantive speech.
First of all words are just not words with explicit meaning to everyone. Some words mean different things to different people; freedom, peace-loving, collateral damage, the flag, patriotism, all have some emotional meaning to people and elicit different responses. Politicians, preachers, corporations, and others who manipulate people for their own purposes, know this and have lists of words readily available for use.
Words (glittering generalities), such as: compassion, determined, future, free, leadership, resolve, skill, faithful, proud, armored charges, mission, God, faith, belief, all used in Bush's State of the Union speeches, got a lot of applause from his side of the gallery.
Glittering generalities are like tinsel, ornaments, and lights placed on an ugly tree. At first glance everything looks beautiful but when you look close it is just a barren stick.
I took a yellow marker to his "tree" and marked all the virtue words--glittering generalities, name calling, and slogans and rewrote the speech from what was left. The result is the following:

State of the Union Address January 20, 2004

To the speaker, Vice President, and citizens--tonight the US has a problem and the government is doing something about it.

Tonight US troops are deployed all over the world fighting the enemy.

Law enforcement people are on the watch for the enemy in order to protect US citizens and allies from them.

Americans work hard, the economy is growing, and tax cuts are helping.

The Congress can take pride for passing bills on reform of school standards and for prescription drugs for older people.

The US has problems--they can be solved, a choice can be made on believing that the enemy will not hurt US citizens, that some countries don't like the US, we can decide to like economic growth, change Education and Medicare, or go back to past policies and political arguments.

The US has not come to this point, through problems, only to stop and not finish work. The US citizens are doing something and expect the government to do something. In their attributes the citizens of the US are showing that the country is able.

The government's job is to protect citizens. Two years have passed and there have been no other attacks, but that does not mean there is no threat. There have been attacks in other places in the world and the enemy is planning to attack everyone. But because of our good attributes we will not be defeated.

The war started in the US, we must give our protection agencies more power to find possible enemies and to sieze their assets by renewing the Patriot Act. Invading citizen's privacy while investigating certain lawbreakers has worked and so we should do the same against possible enemies too. The US government needs to make it easier to go after those who might be the enemy. Don't let part of the Act expire.

The US is attacking the enemy who started the conflict. The US has imprisoned some of them, the US and allies are following the enemy around the world, many of them are dead or captured, and the rest are in unknown places and we will find them.

As part of the conflict the US is intimidating those countries that are susptected of having and aiding the US's enemies, the US refuses to let them threaten the US.

The first enemy to be attacted by the US was hostile Afghans, who helped others hostile to the US and now the US backed Afghans can vote, let women participate, and things are going well there, the US backed Afghan army are continuing to fight hostile Afghans and others considered to be enemies.

Since the last speech here, the US and a few allies ousted Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi people no longer have him as ruler and are no longer under his rule.

After beating the enemy, those who didn't stand and fight the US are doing so now, joined by other US enemies. The US, and a few allies, are making progress, Saddam was found and is now in prision, 45 of 55 wanted by the US have been captured, and forces are moving about and fighting the enemy.

Rebuilding Iraq is hard but the thing to do. The US has always been willing to do so. Last January Iraq's only law was the word of its ruler--today the US and Britain are supporting Iraq in drawing up new laws and a bill of rights. The US and allies are working with the Iraqis and the UN to turn over sovereignty by the end of June.

As US backed rule takes hold in Iraq, those opposed to the US will resist more. They are trying to resist but the US will not be afraid of the enemy. They will fail and the Iraqis will rule themselves.

The speech continues on in a simlar fashion. The many speeches he has made are similarly constructed, so much so they are like TV plots cranked out by writers on Malibu Beach, or a computer program with a data base of virue words--plug in a few ideas and out comes great sounding gibberish.

Dick Chaney and Dr. Strangelove

It wasn't until last night, while watching Wolf Blitzer's interview with Dick Chaney, that it dawned on me what the Bush Administration reminded me of--Dr. Strangelove. Dick Chaney's furtive eye movements, hunched over look, his ramblings using frequent unwarranted extrapolations to justify the administrations goals and actions reminded me of the characters and actions of those in the movie Dr. Strangelove. I kept expecting to see Chaney's hand attack his throat at any time, or start rambling about the terrorists trying to pollute "precious body fluids". Chaney too reminded me, in looks, of President Merkin Muffley.
Chaney's remblings about our winning the war in Iraq reminded me of the same arguments I heard the Johnson administration make. Yes we can "win"; if we want to spend 10 years, a trillion dollars, and who knows how many casualties--but we still wouldn't "win"--if that makes any sense, and it doesn't, and our argument about winning doesn't make sense either. The administration will end up doing what Nixon did, declare some sort of victory, truce, rationale, and then depart. The real point is we have already "won", we deposed Saddam, destroyed non-existent WMDs, kept the terrorists from fighting in our streets, and saved our "precious fluids" from being polluted.

The Law and the Supreme Court

How can a populace respect the law when the law is bought and paid for by one political party or the other? What the public wants and needs is a Supreme Court that is unbiased, a strict interpreter of the Constitution and its intent, is sensitive to the realistic needs of the populace, is driven by objectivity, ignoring the irrational clamorings of segments of the populace.
When a political party stacks the Court with judges whose judgements are colored by bias, prejudice, and partisanship our laws no longer have authority and represent the people, which can only cause the people to have disrespect for all laws.

Bush and Privatization

Bush obviously doesn't have a plan on Social Security that he wants the public to know about, and so long as he can keep on talking about privatizing Social Security he can keep the people distracted enough not to demand one.
The Republicans have never liked Social Security, at least that part of it they have had to pay out. They like that part that comes in that they can spend on fat government contracts given to their buddies.
Social Security has also bailed them out of deficit territory in the past, such as when Ronald Reagan gave huge tax cuts to his rich buddies and then later had to turn around and make up that difference by raising Social Security taxes.
The whole subject of taxes is interesting--the Republicans have attacked the Democrats with slogans such as "the Democrats tax and spend" as if that were a bad thing; I find it a better solution to the Republican's "borrow, spend, and borrow-spend-some-more" way of dealing with budgets. The Republicans end up creating huge deficits, which the Democrats have to deal with afterwards.
The Republicans also came up with the slogan "people are better at spending their own money than the government is". The "people" they are referring to are their rich friends, not the poor and middle class "people"; and as far as spending goes the Republicans end up spending much more than the Democrats do, if you look at the deficits they run up.
The privatization scheme itself got me to thinking--what are the Republicans up to? They don't do anything for the middle-class, so who benefits by privatizing?
The "rich" of course--CEOs, big investors, stock brokers, financiers, etc. If you look at the Stock Market's past history you will notice up until the 1980's its curve was fairly level, then wham--it started to take off at a steep incline. What happened to make it do this? Why, 401k plans started to invest their money in the Stock Market and everyone got into the act--and Bush is looking to do more of the same with privatization. What a "cookie jar" that would be to rob! Remember Tyco, Enron and others? And who is heading up the SEC? Why, one of Bush's buddies of course. Kind of like the fox guarding the hen house. By the way George, what about those records about Harken?

The Durbin Apology

Some Democrats are really simple-minded, of all the true things they could be saying they instead have to make up stupid stuff. I've used the Nazi analogy myself but not to specifically label Republicans Nazis, or that they are totalitarians--not yet anyway.
That the Republicans are using methods similar to that used by the Nazis I do believe to be a fact.
Case in point: Their reliance only on propaganda to sway public opinion--by using transfer symbols (flags, aircraft carriers, jump suits, partisan crowds) name-calling, demonizing opponents, labels, slogans, the over-use of virtue words, distortions, exaggerations, repetition, manipulating the media--just to name a few propaganda ploys the Republicans are using to gain and hold political power. The Republicans have more than a three-to-one advantage over the Democrats in "spin-tanks". Other similarities to the Nazis are:
Super spy agencies, reliance on public surveillance, secret FISA judges, whisked away prisoners, concentration camps, using terror incidents for political purpoes (remember the Reichstag?)--all have historical precedence. The Nazis had Poland, the U.S. has Iraq; who's next? Is the word "Democracy" just another word for "Lebensraum"?

Democrats and National Security

Does anyone really think that the Democrats would develop a policy that would leave the United States vulnerable to attack from terrorists and rogue nations? The whole idea is pure political propaganda put out by Conservative spinmeisters and is absurd. What the Democrats are really saying is that they don't believe in wholesale give-a-ways to the Arms Industry and others, such as Halliburton, so that they can make billions of dollars from questionable government contracts.
The way to dispel such myths is to confront those stating such balderdash, in debates and print.
The Democrats in truth have had a good history of arming and protecting this country and to state that they are weak on national security is false.
The myth may have it roots in the fact that Liberals are more willing to use diplomacy over war, more likely to engage complex issues. The Conservatives on the other hand are more simplistic, less likely to use diplomacy. Conservatives are paranoiacs and tend to "obsess" about potentially dangerous "conspiracies", such as they believed about Saddam Hussein, all the while overlooking real dangers, such as China--which leads to another point--U.S. hypocricy about communism. We spent trillions of dollars over the years battling Soviet communism and are now engaging in an about-face, giving away the "farm", so-to-speak, to communist China; by buying hundreds of billions of dollars of goods from them and making communism a successs. In fact, if I remember correctly, their economy outstripped our own last year. What it all boils down to is the "Almighty Dollar"; Amen.

U.S. Hypocrisy

The Bush administration has made much of spreading Democracy around the world, as a means to secure the U.S. interests and world peace, yet the Republicans and other Conservatives have in the past preferred to undermine Liberal Democracies, freely elected, in favor of Right-Wing Dictators. The Bush administration has been guilty also of interfering in other countries sovereignty, when you consider the recent attempt at ousting President Chavez, of Venezuela, a democratically elected President. As a result of "public diplomacy" campaigns aimed against the U.S. public, Americans believe that these "Liberal, Left-Wing Democracies" are a threat to our Democracy; yet, Bush and his spinmeisters argue that if a country chooses Democracy as its form of government that government will become peaceful and "freedom-loving". The contradiction in their logic and spin I will leave to the reader to sort out.

Public Diplomacy?

Recently it was reported that the administration was seeking 300 million dollars for the purpose of creating a "Public Diplomacy" campaign (a euphamism for Propaganda) to "educate" a suspicious Middle Eastern public about U.S. efforts to bring them Democracy. However, ever since Ronald Reagan's illegal propaganda effort run by Ollie North and Otto Reich in the White House I have been wary of the Republicans affinity to use propaganda to influence American opinion and this new propaganda effort sounds more for U.S. public consumption than for Middle East consumption. The real result would be "blow-back", where we the American public would get back our own message, fed back to us from abroad.
What the administration might try instead is to shuck its arrogance and develop a good international policy. So far the thrust of U.S. International policy has relied on intimidation and coercion, effective maybe for the short-term but not for good long-term relations. Our do-it-alone "High Noon" attitude means we fight the bad guys by ourselves, which at this writing has resulted in 1721 GI deaths and many more wounded and over 200 billions of dollars. Our only "gain" is international skepticism and a resolve by our enemies to develop "equalizers".
The greatest tragedy, besides the casualties of war, is the lies that have been fed to the GIs in order to make them willing to fight. The truth is we are not fighting for our "Freedom" in Iraq, as Iraq did not pose a threat to the U.S. and had nothing to do with the attack on the WTC and did not pose a threat to any other country in the Middle East. Its only "support" for terrorism was money given to the families of suicide bombers who had their homes blown up by the Israelis; more of a humanitarian gesture than a terrorist one. The administration lied.
The reason we are fighting in Iraq is because of a plan drawn up years ago based on Kissinger's theories to democricize and secure oil in the region for the U.S. and its close allies. Add in a religious prophecy involving the return of Israel and you have a real conspiracy theory! The Bush administration is up to its neck in hanky-panky--the war, political favors, stiffing the middle class, etc. and, if government documents aren't "lost" may be revealed in time. The Republicans have been very adept at cover-ups--remember the Savings and Loan Scandal, Iran-Contra, Watergate, and I believe there was a lot more to the White Water investigation than we know involving trying to demonize an opposing President and party.

Memos--What Memos?

Now the Conservative SpinMeisters are trying to deligitimize the evidence (Memos) by creating rumors that they are bogus. So far I haven't heard anyone in the Blair administration deny their authenticity--but who needs the memos?
It was obvious from the start that the Bush and Blair administrations were engaging in a Propaganda campaign using the flimsiest of examples to promote a war--case in point: Drones, they said Saddam was planning on using them to attack the U.S.--from 7000 miles away? Not even our own sophisticated Drones had that capability. Then there was the "aluminum tubes", ordered openly over the Internet, that nuclear experts said to the administration that they were unsuitable for use as parts of an uranium centrifuge, they were too thick, too short, and were anodized. An aluminum tube alone does not a centrifuge make. Then there was the "yellow-cake" uranium ore--worthless without the centrifuges; besides the French had control over the mining of yellow cake and it was already sold; besides, it was a controlled substance and monitored by the International Nuclear Agency. The whole affair was an obvious set-up, which could have been exposed if our media was doing its job; which it obviously wasn't.

Bush's Track Record

How did we, the voters, get a President that failed as a businessman, was a drunk, reportedly engaged in questionable stock trading, made false claims about his educational successes while governor, started an unnecessary war, runs up billions in U.S. debt, acts like a dictator, engages in Propaganda, spends more time away from the White House than in and, though claiming to be a uniter etc., is the most divisive President I've ever seen or heard of? His whole administration reminds me of Disneyland--of smoke and mirrors. He has plenty of rhetoric but little substance--at least for us of the middle class. If it weren't for the religious factor his administration would be in the tank, but as long as he keeps saying "God Bless America" after every speech he keeps a blind following.