I had a chance to talk with a couple of my contempooraries on Friday about these posts. I'm afraid that I was a bit defensive but that was becasue it dawned on me that I have never explained the purpose of my ramblings.
Since the days....actually very dark days... when Ronald Reagan became president, the behavior of conservatives absolutely fascinated me. The "rank-and-file" Republicans I knew had absolutely no idea about the underlying reasons for republican/conservative doctrine, in trstead, they picked up on catch phrases and clever "one-liners" from conservative pundits and accepted them as biblical truth (more on that some other time) and put their money, life and faith in the catch phrases. In many instances, the "one-liners" were at odds with what I understood to be traditional conservative dogma. In other words the rank and file was being manipulated, lied to, pandered to, in order to support candidates who were not, as far as I knew, really philosophical conservatives.
To expect that all men for all time will go on thinking different things, and yet doing the same things, is a doubtful speculation. It is not founding society on a communion, or even on a convention, but rather on a coincidence. Four men may meet under the same lamp post; one to paint it pea green as part of a great municipal reform; one to read his breviary in the light of it; one to embrace it with accidental ardour in a fit of alcoholic enthusiasm; and the last merely because the pea green post is a conspicuous point of rende
zvous with his young lady. But to expect this to happen night after night is unwise...." [Footnote: G. K. Chesterton, "The Mad Hatter and the Sane Householder," _Vanity Fair_, January, 1921, p. 54]Chesterton was saying, of course, that the public, and most specifically, Public Opinion, had to be "shaped and moulded" because they cannot be expected to come to the "correct" opinion by themselves. This leads to the obvious conclusion that leaders and wise men (remember the "Philosopher Kings" of Strauss fame?) should shape public opinion....
sound familiar?
Look what happens with Walter Lippment did to "expand on" the concept.
My conclusion is that public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press as is the case today. This organization I conceive to be in the first instance the task of a political science that has won its proper place as formulator, in advance of real decision, instead of apologist, critic, or reporter after the decision has been made. I try to indicate that the perplexities of government and industry are conspiring to give political science this enormous opportunity to enrich itself and to serve the public. And, of course, I hope that these pages will help a few people to realize that opportunity more vividly, and therefore to pursue it more consciously.
Booman Observes:
Here, Lippmann's original observation has become somewhat more specific and nefarious. Lippmann was calling for something very like the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence. It would be a group of highly trained people that would do what no single leader could do...break down the huge amounts of data in the world into digestable bits, and allow power-brokers to make reality-based decisions. And, then, help mobilize the media to mold public opinion in support of a policy that had been well thought out by experts, but might not be easily sellable to an uninformed public.
The Straussians had a different take. For them, the kind of analysis done by the CIA was doomed to be flawed by the actions of the enemy...who would always seek to deceive. Moreover, matters of policy couldn't, or shouldn't, be left to politicians. Politicians have certain skill sets but, for Straussians, deep thinking isn't necessary one of them. If you understand this mindset it makes it easier to understand the meaning of Ron Suskind's famous contact with an aide to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Far too many people on the left misinterpreted this statement and went racing to declare themselves 'proud members of the reality-based community'. Doing that is only a way of making yourself look stupid and validating the Straussian's contempt for you. For the neo-conservatives in this administration, the meaning of reality-based is quite different from how most people conceive it. Reality-based refers to those people that are on the receiving end of the media barrage and not on the production end. People that deal only in reality are people that think reality can be discerned by reading the papers. But, for the Straussians, that is but the shadow on the wall of a cave.
"...the wall of a cave.." Plato's cave?
The true Form of reality is made, for example, when Scooter Libby sits down for a chat with Judith Miller in the St. Regis Hotel and leaks part if the National Intelligence Estimate to her. Libby worked to get misinformation into the NIE, and then he leaks that misinformation back to the press in order to justify other misinformation that is under threat of exposure.
In other words, while we're studying reality (reading Joe Wilson's editorial in the New York Times), they will act again (leak the NIE, expose the critic's wife, spread new disinformation) and we will be left to study what they do.
This type of manipulation of public opinion is most blatant where it is consciously done. And the two places where it is most consciously done is at The New Republic and within neo-conservative circles.
Both efforts are deeply cynical and undemocratic. And they have dominated U.S. foreign policy for
Is this what the rank-and-file Republican/conservative really believes?
Or is it that the rank-and-file Republican really believes that he or she must subjigate themselves to a higher authority (philosopher king?) to maintain order in society? And this is "okay" with them?
Do they understand at all?
