Why Now?

Baldimo wrote:

The Dems were so worried about distabilizing the ME and causing havoc. If that were the case then how come they went and did something stupid like this?

...

It was contained to Iraq and Afghanistan now its going to spread!

Does that mean that you'll be getting a recall notice soon, B. Will it be your sworn duty to be headin' on over there to try to put a stop to this? How long was your last tour of duty anyway?

JTT wrote:

Baldimo wrote:

The Dems were so worried about distabilizing the ME and causing havoc. If that were the case then how come they went and did something stupid like this?

...

It was contained to Iraq and Afghanistan now its going to spread!

Does that mean that you'll be getting a recall notice soon, B. Will it be your sworn duty to be headin' on over there to try to put a stop to this? How long was your last tour of duty anyway?

Not that your questions are bad, but Baldimo should be respected for his service no matter whether we agree with his opinions or not.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

JTT wrote:

Baldimo wrote:

The Dems were so worried about distabilizing the ME and causing havoc. If that were the case then how come they went and did something stupid like this?

...

It was contained to Iraq and Afghanistan now its going to spread!

Does that mean that you'll be getting a recall notice soon, B. Will it be your sworn duty to be headin' on over there to try to put a stop to this? How long was your last tour of duty anyway?

Not that your questions are bad, but Baldimo should be respected for his service no matter whether we agree with his opinions or not.

Cycloptichorn

That might well be, Cy, if, if he actually served. Somethin's mighty fishy.

Based upon a bunch of prior posts, I have little doubt about this.

But, let's be honest - personal details of people's Real Lives aren't all that important to the discussion anyways.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Based upon a bunch of prior posts, I have little doubt about this.

But, let's be honest - personal details of people's Real Lives aren't all that important to the discussion anyways.

Cycloptichorn

Admittedly, Cy, I haven't read each and every one of B's posts, but I'm still not so certain that he has served. He could straighten this out in a flash, just as GWB could have. Is he now ignoring it?

If he has served, grand; if he hasn't, well let's just wait and see what B has to say.

JTT would probably rather believe Jesse MacBeth or John Kerry, Baldimo.

okie wrote:

JTT would probably rather believe Jesse MacBeth or John Kerry, Baldimo.

in that baldi and kerry both went into the service voluntarily, they are due equal respect.

and as far as baldi goes... i'm glad that he made it back safely and without serious injury.

DontTreadOnMe wrote:

okie wrote:

JTT would probably rather believe Jesse MacBeth or John Kerry, Baldimo.

in that baldi and kerry both went into the service voluntarily, they are due equal respect.

and as far as baldi goes... i'm glad that he made it back safely and without serious injury.

I thought this was about me not John Kerry. How did he get dragged into this? It was my military service that was in question not his. Besides I did my whole tour and he didn't. I know I know Bush never went and didn't serve his whole time. Thats fine with me, he never ran on his military service like Kerry did.

Baldimo wrote:

DontTreadOnMe wrote:

okie wrote:

JTT would probably rather believe Jesse MacBeth or John Kerry, Baldimo.

in that baldi and kerry both went into the service voluntarily, they are due equal respect.

and as far as baldi goes... i'm glad that he made it back safely and without serious injury.

I thought this was about me not John Kerry. How did he get dragged into this? It was my military service that was in question not his. Besides I did my whole tour and he didn't. I know I know Bush never went and didn't serve his whole time. Thats fine with me, he never ran on his military service like Kerry did.

More specifically, he ran from it.

Cycloptichorn

Having enlisted and served in SouthEast Indo-China I have zero respect for the simple fact that someone has served in the military. I met more total idiots in my days in the service than I ever have in general society.

JTT on the other hand...

JTT, eat a big can of idiot soup today?

The U.S. pioneered the public relations industry. Its committment was to "control the public mind," as its leaders put it. They learned a lot from the successes of the Creel Commission and the success in creating the Red Scare and its aftermath. The public relations industry underwent a huge expansion at that time. It succeeded for some time in creating almost total subordination of the public to business rule through the 1920s....

Public relations is a huge industry. They're spending by now something on the order of a billion dollars a year. All along its committment was to controlling the public mind....

...The corporate executive and the guy who cleans the floor all have the same interests. We can all work together and work for Americanism in harmony, liking each other. That was essentially the message. A huge amount of effort was put into presenting it. This is, after all, the business community, so they control the media and have massive resources... Mobilizing community opinion in favor of vapid, empty concepts like Americanism. Who can be against that?

Or, to bring it up to date, "Support our troops." Who can be against that? Or yellow ribbons. Who can be against that?... The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa.

Of course, there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support our policy? But you don't want people to think about the issue. That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything, but its crucial value is that it diverts your attention....

That's all very effective. It runs right up to today. And of course it is carefully thought out. The people in the public relations industry aren't there for the fun of it. They're doing work. They're trying to instill the right values. In fact, they have a conception of what democracy ought to be: It ought to be a system in which the specialized class is trained to work in the service of the masters, the people who own the society. The rest of the population ought to be deprived of any form of organization, because organization just causes trouble. They ought to be sitting alone in front of the TV and having drilled into their heads the message, which says, the only value in life is to have more commodities or live like that rich middle class family you're watching and to have nice values like harmony and Americanism. That's all there is in life. You may think in your own head that there's got to be something more in life than this, but since you're watching the tube alone you assume, I must be crazy, because that's all that's going on over there....

So that's the ideal. Great efforts are made in trying to achieve that ideal. Obviously, there is a certain conception behind it. The conception of democracy is the one that I mentioned. The bewildered herd is a problem. We've got to prevent their rage and trampling. We've got to distract them. They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies.

Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our troops." You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they're not competent to think. Therefore it's important to distract them and marginalize them.

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9103-media-control.html