Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Palin, Psy-Ops & 'Condescending" Libs

By Robert Parry
February 8, 2010

In the 1980s, while a reporter for the Associated Press, I had the opportunity to chat over the phone with legendary CIA psy-war specialist Edward Lansdale. A mutual friend had set up the contact, which I hoped might lead to a more formal interview.

Read on.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

All of the arguements in this piece are correct and rational. Unfortunately most peoples brains don't respond well to rational arguements. They respond to emotion (read George Lakoff's book The Political Mind). The left after all these decades still hasn't learned this lesson and will continue to loose in the war of ideas until it does learn.

Tue Feb 09, 11:32:00 AM 2010
Morton Kurzweil said...

Advantage neocoms. People are generally susceptible to sentiment, an emotional association to herd culture, not to ideas. Sentiment is what fills pews in religious associations, sports arenas, political factions, ethnic groups, business enterprise, and social cliques. Sentiment makes leaders of celebrities, It is the natural tendency to rely on the comfort of crowds, the certainty of belief, rather than the insecurity of facts.
The discomfort to believers by alternative choices must be ignored if objectivity is to have any chance.
Political correctness and courtesy are code words in defense of sentiment.

Tue Feb 09, 12:57:00 PM 2010
Richard said...

With nearly 1/2 the country functionally illiterate, why is it surprising that emotionalism trumps the intellect every time?
In a nation where most of the population never actually read a book, why would anyone expect them to know anything?
It seems to be incredibly easy to tweak history when your target population doesn't know any history.

For example, I happened to be reading a book on WW2 at work this weekend. A young guy, maybe in his 20s, said to me, "I know that England & Great Britain were allied against Hitler, but I'm fuzzy on the rest."

Fuzzy on the rest, eh?

If there is anything scarier than a nation of Bible thumpingly clueless half-wits with hundreds of nuclear weapons, I've yet to imagine it.

Also, Time had an article a few weeks back suggesting that Obama needs to take a few tricks from the Gipper's playbook.

After pondering that for awhile, I've come to the conclusion that the article's author doesn't actually know anything about Reagan.
What he does know is the plethora of Republican myth-making that came up after Reagan drifted off into the land of the Feeble-Minded.

I lived through the 80s and, for the life of me, I can't think of one good reason why anyone sane would ever want to copy Reagan.
Geez, the Gip actually let Hal "nuclear war is God's plan" Lindsey address the freaking Pentagon for crap's sake.
If that isn't a sign that Ron's elevator stopped waaaaaaaaaaay shy of the top floors, I don't know my omens.

Tue Feb 09, 04:14:00 PM 2010
Doug Morrison said...

Robert,
Great article. I do believe that you have defined modern 'doublespeak'.

Wed Feb 10, 12:53:00 PM 2010

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