I’ll admit I’m predisposed to liking Al Franken both culturally and politically. Al (as I like to call him), is clearly a liberal He’s the host of an Air America program, author of previous books of political humor, and a legitimate possibility to run for Minnesota Senator. Not to mention the fact that I grew up in the Al Franken decade. And even if you don’t get that joke, or dont feel you like him, really like him, you’ll probably enjoy reading Al if you have a sense of humor and appreciation for facts, scholarship, and research.
Al’s last book, Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair And Balanced Look At The Right, took aim mostly at conservative media. It tore empirical holes in the credibility of the Bill O’Reilly’s, Ann Coulter’s, and Sean Hannity’s, while also exposing various right-wing conspiracies as led by the likes of Karl Rove. And it was funny. In The Truth, Al still has some shots to take at these purveyors of lies, but spends most of the book detailing the erroneous and conspiratorial rush to war and the Rove led campaign of fear used to insure an election win in 04. It’s still funny, but it’s not all about the laughs with Al. He’s grown from an Emmy award winning t.v. writer and comedian to a real journalist. He’s always had the educational cred as a Harvard grad, but now he writes best selling books and hosts a highly rated radio show that are both based on punditry. And he knows his shit.
So i’ll tell you right off that I liked the book and wish everyone would read it. I wish they’d read Lies And… even more. Just check out the Paul Wellstone chapter at least. Even reasonably informed people will find shocking things, but if you’re not a political junkie you’ll really be amazed. So enough about the book in general terms. I’d rather touch on a few particulars of interest to me and hopefully to you, my non-eixistent audience.
The election:
Al does a good job (and most importantly for those in the war against the sides of prevarication and misrepresentation, he does an empirical and statistically backed up and documented job), showing how the idea that the religious right won the election and provided Bush a mandate is in fact untrue. With statistics, studies, quotes from Team America the World Police, and other facts, Al shows how negligible the religious effect was. He also proves with little doubt how the fear factor was more than just supposition on the parts of fringe lunes like myself. The advertisements run by the Bush campaign, and the selective statements made by Dick and Bush show a strong indication of a concerted effort to create fear. The wolf advertisement that was filled with more lies about Kerry as with the Swift Boat campaign that Al also rips apart in the book, was meant to invoke childhood psychological misgivings sprung from stories like Little Red Riding Hood that they knew the security, or soccer moms reading these stories to kids in the present would be moved by. This was bolstered with Bush’s claims about the danger to lives if they show uncertainty in election time (meaning changing Presidents), and Cheney puking out such wretched garbage as this:
“It’s absolutely essential that 8 weeks from today, on November 2, we make the right choice…if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again…in a way that will be devestating.”
This all goes to social science research they all are made very a ware of. In particular a field called Mortaltiy Salience is used to advantage. Brandonicus and I were discussing this very topic in matters unrelated to Bush and America just a few weeks before I read this book. A subfield of particular note for the real “evildoers,” is something called Terror Management Theory, or TMT. It makes people do alot of stupid shit out of fear of dying. One of them is to affirm your worldview by lashing out at those who believe otherwise, especially those not on the same “I’m going straight to Heaven because I say I follow Christ”, bandwagon. Not that it’s just Christians. But that’s the group Rove and the planners were targeting so cynically. TMT also makes people want a charismatic visionary leader in times of fear, as opposed to a realistic, task oriented one.
A study done last year whose results were published in the Sep 2004 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, proved how if people were kept in a fearful mode being reminded of death and their mortality, they were much more likely to vote for Bush, the guy reminding them of it.
One group was asked to describe what thoughts of their deaths made them feel, while the other group was asked to talk about how t.v made them feel. They were both asked to evaluate an essay praising Bush and his war. Most in the first group approved of it. Most in the t.v. group thought it bullshit.
Then a third group was added with thoughts of 9-11 given to them to prime the subconscious. Another group did thoughts on death, and the other of pain. Pain was subbed for t.v to control for bad thoughts in general being a factor. The pain group preffered Kerry more than 2 to 1. The death and 9-11 groups overwhelmingly preferred Bush. These were a mix of liberals, moderates, and conservatives. Al quotes the study. here’s my favorite part: “political allegiances are not always based on the balanced, rational forces of self-interest…but also on the operation of nonrational forces of which we are not always aware.”
Morals had nothing to do with any of it. That was based on a poorly designed exit poll. and yet we still have Democrats running around seriously thinking about moving even more to the right than these traitorous cowards already have. It was all about fear and they knew it. Besides a diversion from their illicit activities or bad press, it’s why they kept up with false terror alerts that even Tom Ridge who was running Homeland Security said were based on nothing. It’s why they never stopped with 9-11 talk despite being the regime that allowed it to happen. It’s why they mentioned 9-11, Saddam, Iraq, and terrorism 17,800 times during the Republican Convention and Osama Bin Laden only once. These guys are not dumb. They know that what fires together wires together, as Al also quotes that famous psychological maxim.
Another interesting section goes along way towards bringing together alot of the evidence that this admistration purposefully lied to engage in an invasion of Iraq that 9-11 became the fortuitous excuse for. One quote I had never heard before, Franken includes. It’s a statement to journalist Ron Suskind from a senior Bush adviser. Here’s how Suskind put it:
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.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “THat’s not the way the world really works anymore…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, adn 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.”
As Franken writes in response, “Doesn’t that sound like the kind of statement a Bond villain would make just before falling into his own shark tank?”
And this is just one of many examples we have of a diabolical evil at work in our name. It’s bad enough they’re stupid, but throw evil into the mix and we have the makings of a really bad movie. Octopussy bad even.
On the subject of stupidity how about this nugget Franken includes from Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi exile that was one of the primary sources of info Bush used to justify how badly we were needed and wanted in Iraq. He visited the White House to watch the Super Bowl and later told former State dept official Dave Phillips that Kanan “Had to explain to the President of the United States the differences between Arab Shi’s, Arab Sunnis, and Kurds.” This was 3 months before we invaded Iraq and long after a decision had been made to do so. But hey who needs information and history when you have Halliburt…uhhh I mean God, on your side.
But Franken includes the hope many of us have been clinging to that the Right has overeached and is getting exposed now. He includes a chapter detailing the failing of the Schiavo issue to further divide as Republicans hoped it would. He ably tears up their media and polticians like Frist and Delay who clearly sought to use this as a wedge issue despite enormous evidence of hypocrisy including Delay having pulled the plug on his own father. And of course there is the basic hypocrisy in the supposed Republican ideals of less government involvement and more state rights. Here we had a case where they moved to take those rights away and get a Federal intervention so that they could play off what they thought would be a wedge issue in an election year.
Anotherr chapter gets into the evil that is Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay. This includes Delay’s involvement with the Mariana Islands U.S. Commenwealth that gets by not having to have our laws due to this status and is engaged in slave labor, forced prostitution, and forced abortions. Delay, a champion of the pro life crowd spent time on the islands basking in his investment there and telling the japanese and chinese investors that what they were doing there represented the direction of the Republican party as a “shining light,” and, “what we’re trying to do in America.”
Franken gets into some of the Abramoff-Scanlon degrading and ripping off of Indian tribes which is in the news and a major potential issue that should be played up more for all Abramoff’s connections to the party and mountain of scandals and illegalities. He’s the missing link that can connect alot of dots of corruption, and if nothing else serves as an indicator of what the party is about and who they do business with.
Then of course we have the Social Security privatization movement that failed. Franken compiles some of the evidence in a user friendly way (at least for me who am admittedly not an economic whiz), to show how Bush clearly lied and mislead people in a way that jeopordized their futures because Wall Street bankers and investment managers had lobbied him for a new system that promised to make them richer. It was nothing new since Republicans have long attempted to undo S.S. as a reminder of a liberal program that has constituted one of the greatest success stories and heroic civil efforts in the history of humanity.
Among the interesting points is that one of the numbers floated by the administration to prove the insolvency of S.S. was based on numbers that extended life expectancy to 150 and kept retirement age at 67. It also used infinity as a base of measurement. At one point Bush tried to make the case that S.S. was unfair to black people despite overwhelming non partisan agreement that it was blacks and minorities, along with widows and injured workers who benefited most. The Right Wing Heritage Foundation provided the faulty numbers that tried to convince black families that because black men die earlier than white sthey were not receiving S.S.’s benefits. But the methodology was torn apart by those non biased groups that actually do this kind of stuff for a living. What Heritage did among other things was assume every black person would drop dead exactly the day they turned 69 with no health care concerns before that, no disability necessary, no living with dignity into thier 70′s or 80′s. Just pay into the system until 67, and die 2 years later with nothing but 2 years reward. Heritage knowingly ignored the reality of life expectancy as well as the fact that many blacks need to get help due to these other factors S.S. pays out for like survivor and disability benefits. And of course due to our social inequalities black people are more likely to need and receive these other benefits and would be fucked without them.
A sweet irony is that some of the inspiration came from a Heritage and Cato Institute paper calling for reform in S.S. based on Leninist strategies. This had something to do with isolating and destryong opponents as they purposefully set out to willfully collapse society. Of course propaganda would be a tool o effect this as they formed a plan Bush would be the puppet for as he knowingly lied to seniors to divide them from younger people and isolate along generational lines. Blatant editing of quotes from town hall meetings across America along the lines of the way bad movies will use a partial quote that makes it sound like a goood review was another tool. But none of it worked. We may not be the brightest citizenry in creation but the lesson here is don’t mess with our money because when it comes to that we will do our homework. Also old people aren’t stupid.
One revelatory moment on Bush’s S.S. reform trail stands out as showing his character in the vain of his insulting brushing aside of the death toll numbers from iraq the other day. One of the pre screened town hall subjects went off script and mentioned to Bush that she had to work 3 jobs to support her retarded child. Bush’s response:
“Uniquely American isn’t it? I mean that is fantastic that you’re doing that. Get any sleep?” (Laughter ensues.)
The woman’s reply: “No. not much.”
Bush: “Well hopefully this will help you to get your sleep to know that when we talk about Social Security nothing changes.”
Ahhh feel that compassionate conservatism?
I’m trying real hard to be loving and forgiving. To not let anger overwhelm me. To love and transcend. But fuck me this scumbag son of a bitch deserves to have his head on a chopping block in a town square as a black man, an elderly person, a single mother, a limbless Iraqi vet, and Jesus piss on his face before the blade comes down. I’m sorry if that’s harsh, but it’s bloody-teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony-compared to what this monster has done in a willful and knowing manner.
There’s more in the book which I certainly recommend, but I’ll close with this quote I was familiar with from Eisenhower. Franken quotes it in his chapter on S.S.:
“Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are…a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman…Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
Ike warned us about the military industrial complex, and he gave us an honest heads up about these guys. Well now their numbers have grown, though their seeds are still in that Texas oil millionaire good ole boy mentality. They also have roots in the John Birch society and the ravings of people like Ayn Rand. They are children of Nixon and their motivations remain as selfish as ever.
And they are still stupid.
On Thursday December 8th, radio stations including Woodstock’s WDST will mark the 25th Anniversary of the death of John Lennon with moments of silence and other events geared towards the message of peace and love Lennon is so remembered for. There will also be a candlelight vigil in Poughkeepsie at 6 p.m.
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