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Originally Posted by roachboy
i just read through the op again and realized that i moved from one level to another--i signalled it, but perhaps not adequately---i take the lincoln group's activities in iraq as an index of two interconnected wars of position--that is ideolgical conflicts--one that is particular to the iraq debacle, and another, which is broader and which functions as an important dimension of conservative ideology (rather than the tactics of the republican party proper)....which plays out across the control of terms, their definitions and associations. i used the article from the nyt about lincoln as a jump off directed mostly at the latter, broader conservative ideological apparatus (for lack of a better term) and for broader questions---which i took as coherent because i see the two aspects as intertwined at this point--but not as identical.
the junction between the two is the parallel concern for how information is framed.
the questions concerned the central role played in conservative ideology by controlling debate by controlling the terms used to frame it.
this linked to debates that unfold--or dont--in this forum because often--not always, but often--folk from the right enter these discussions already having decided that the terminologies particular to the right are adequate as descriptors and show almost no wilingness to step outside that terminology to enter into discussions about the terms themselves. this is why i said at the outset that debate is often shortcircuited at the outset because, by choosing to stage issues in this way, basic political choices have already been settled in a sense and discussion deteriorates from that into the usual partisan pissing matches.....
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Politically, these are confusing times. It has dawned on me, after observing and trying to digest the "events", at least since the controversy over the secrecy and co-opting of the public interest of the Cheney energy "task force", in 2001, that your example of the Lincoln Groups's activity, is part of a disturbing pattern of deliberate distraction.
Consider that there are a group of opportunists in control of the federal government, and observe how they act ingeniously to influence, and then to exploit what you described here:
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Originally Posted by roachboy
......contemporary politics is more about conflict over words, over meanings, over associations than it is about the positions outlined through these words/meanings/associations--that is---conflict is in a sense already over once someone begins to outline their views across the particular, dense field of signifiers particular to the american right---whence the repeated calls for debates that do not involve a simple recycling of talking points, of ways ot speaking/writing encouraged by the conservative media apparatus.
the focus and onus is on the right in this case as a simple function of fact---the right has engaged in the systematic construction of a media apparatus, using an extraordinary amount of private capital to fund it, to create its institutional infrastructure, its own media---and, more importantly, to construct outlets like fox that appear to function in an ambiguous relation to this ideological construction system---to use techniques for press management pioneered by the thatcher-reagan era, choking off access by the press to unformed information, making the press as reliant as possible on centralized information sources, which communicate prepackaged information which arrives alredy wrapped in the thick dulling fat of conservative memes.
the article from the post above is, in this context, but an index.
but it is an important index of the scale of ideological conflict and functions to explain why, in my view at least, debate that restricts itself to the recycling of claims already wrapped in ideological language is most often not debate at all.........
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Now.....as you wrote.....the people behind Bush administration did not create the current media apparatus, but they seem to be using it as a smokescreen
to deflect attention from the result of what they actaully do...time after time.
I see that the spectacle of Bush himself; his public performance ....mangling the english language....the contradiction of his background......high schooling at
http://www.andover.edu/ , in Massachusetts, followed by seven years of college at Yale and Harvard, vs. his crafted "common man" of the "born again", christian south, complete with his Texas drawl, makes him the perfect "front man", for this repeating pattern:
Mission background: Reward Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign organizer and fundraiser, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Christian_Bailey">Christian Bailey</a> , for his efforts.
Solution: Create "make work" low impact vs. high price "news" distribution project in Iraq, earmarked for Bailey's newly created "company" and send $130 million "his way".
Diversion: Manage anticipated controversy similarly to the ways that the Cheney Energy Task Force "issues", and the question of how the Bush admin.
"handled" pre-invasion Iraqi WMD intelligence.
The four big "tells" that reinforce my theory that folks who actually "run" the distribution of federal funds and leverage events to increase their "authority",
are the Cheney Energy Task Force, 9/11, Invasion or Iraq, and the Katrina disaster.
I suspect that these folks put a low priority on their "conservative" ideology.
They simply use the media "apparatus" that roachboy described, to shape (LIMIT) all inquiries, (9/11 Commission, Silberman Intelligence Investigation, Senate Select Committee on Intel Investigation) or the "review" of the "Lincoln Group" propaganda contracts, so that the result is always:
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/po...22lincoln.html
No Breach Seen in Work in Iraq on Propaganda
By THOM SHANKER
Published: March 22, 2006
<b>.....The findings are narrow in focus,</b> and conclude that the Lincoln Group committed no legal violations because its actions in paying to place American-written articles without attribution were not expressly prohibited by its contract or military rules.......
....Officials familiar with <b>the review said it did not deal deeply with how the Lincoln Group had received the contract, or with whether the organization had established sufficient expertise or experience</b> to carry out the contract effectively.
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I think that conservatives are only just beginning to pay attention to this "pattern". Occupation of Iraq may just be a larger version of the Lincoln Group "make work" excuse for a financial political payback to Christian Bailey. It may have been an excuse to exert the newly acquired post 9/11 "power" and reward the connected, all at our expense, with the "media apparatus" employed as compliant "stooge".