[extropy-chat] Fwd: [Atheist-Politics] Ignorance Isn't Strength

[Samantha Atkins]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gene Ehrich <ygehrich at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 17:58:19 -0400
Subject: [Atheist-Politics] Ignorance Isn't Strength
To: Atheist Politics <atheist-politics at yahoogroups.com>,
politics-for-elders at yahoogroups.com,
opinions-without-malice at yahoogroups.com


 
 
 October 8, 2004
 
 OP-ED COLUMNIST
 
 
 
 Ignorance Isn't Strength
 
 By PAUL KRUGMAN
 
 first used the word "Orwellian" to describe the Bush team in October 2000. 
 Even then it was obvious that George W. Bush surrounds himself with people 
 who insist that up is down, and ignorance is strength. But the full costs 
 of his denial of reality are only now becoming clear.
 
 President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have an unparalleled ability 
 to insulate themselves from inconvenient facts. They lead a party that 
 controls all three branches of government, and face news media that in some 
 cases are partisan supporters, and in other cases are reluctant to state 
 plainly that officials aren't telling the truth. They also still enjoy the 
 residue of the faith placed in them after 9/11.
 
 This has allowed them to engage in what Orwell called "reality control." In 
 the world according to the Bush administration, our leaders are infallible, 
 and their policies always succeed. If the facts don't fit that assumption, 
 they just deny the facts.
 
 As a political strategy, reality control has worked very well. But as a 
 strategy for governing, it has led to predictable disaster. When leaders 
 live in an invented reality, they do a bad job of dealing with real reality.
 
 In the last few days we've seen some impressive demonstrations of reality 
 control at work. During the debate on Tuesday, Mr. Cheney insisted that "I 
 have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." After the 
 release of the Duelfer report, which shows that Saddam's weapons 
 capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing, at the time of the 
 invasion, Mr. Cheney declared that the report proved that "delay, defer, 
 wait wasn't an option."
 
 From a political point of view, such exercises in denial have been very 
 successful. For example, the Bush administration has managed to convince 
 many people that its tax cuts, which go primarily to the wealthiest few 
 percent of the population, are populist measures benefiting middle-class 
 families and small businesses. (Under the administration's definition, 
 anyone with "business income" - a group that includes Dick Cheney and 
 George Bush - is a struggling small-business owner.)
 
 The administration has also managed to convince at least some people that 
 its economic record, which includes the worst employment performance in 70 
 years, is a great success, and that the economy is "strong and getting 
 stronger." (The data to be released today, which are expected to improve 
 the numbers a bit, won't change the basic picture of a dismal four years.)
 
 Officials have even managed to convince many people that they are moving 
 forward on environmental policy. They boast of their "Clear Skies" plan 
 even as the inspector general of the E.P.A. declares that the enforcement 
 of existing air-quality rules has collapsed.
 
 But the political ability of the Bush administration to deny reality - to 
 live in an invented world in which everything is the way officials want it 
 to be - has led to an ongoing disaster in Iraq and looming disaster elsewhere.
 
 How did the occupation of Iraq go so wrong? (The security situation has 
 deteriorated to the point where there are no safe places: a bomb was 
 discovered on Tuesday in front of a popular restaurant inside the Green Zone.)
 
 The insulation of officials from reality is central to the story. They 
 wanted to believe Ahmad Chalabi's promises that we'd be welcomed with 
 flowers; nobody could tell them different. They wanted to believe - months 
 after everyone outside the administration realized that we were facing a 
 large, dangerous insurgency and needed more troops - that the attackers 
 were a handful of foreign terrorists and Baathist dead-enders; nobody could 
 tell them different.
 
 Why did the economy perform so badly? Long after it was obvious to everyone 
 outside the administration that the tax-cut strategy wasn't an effective 
 way of creating jobs, administration officials kept promising huge job 
 gains, any day now. Nobody could tell them different.
 
 Why has the pursuit of terrorists been so unsuccessful? It has been obvious 
 for years that John Ashcroft isn't just scary; he's also scarily 
 incompetent. But inside the administration, he's considered the man for the 
 job - and nobody can say different.
 
 The point is that in the real world, as opposed to the political world, 
 ignorance isn't strength. A leader who has the political power to pretend 
 that he's infallible, and uses that power to avoid ever admitting mistakes, 
 eventually makes mistakes so large that they can't be covered up. And 
 that's what's happening to Mr. Bush.
 
 E-mail: krugman at nytimes.com
 
 
 
 Yahoo! Groups Sponsor 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT
 
 
 ________________________________
 Yahoo! Groups Links
 
To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Atheist-Politics/
  
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
Atheist-Politics-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com
  
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.