Ghosts of Soviet propaganda machine haunt Russian media

MOSCOW (AFP) - Dead bodies, striptease quiz shows, gala concerts for the secret services: nothing is off limits on Russian television -- except objective news coverage, say critics of media freedom under President Vladimir Putin.

Russian television today is light years from its drab Soviet incarnation, full of brash, sometimes stomach-churning programmes, as well as slick dramas.

But the ghosts of Soviet propaganda haunt the hourly state news broadcasts, dominated by dreary footage of Putin and his ministers at work, patriotic features on army life, or alarming reports about the pro-Western governments in Georgia and Ukraine.

Putin, who hosts the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg later this week, is accused of destroying media freedoms won in the 1990s by monopolising television and marginalising the few remaining independent newspaper journalists.

Russia ranks below countries like Egypt and Haiti in terms of journalists' freedom, the US-based organisation Freedom House says.

A study released in April by the Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations, which defends journalists' rights in Russia, found that 91 percent of political news on the national television channel ORT was devoted to Putin and his "ruling powers."

Almost three quarters of that coverage was positive and the rest neutral, while opposition voices barely got a look in, the study found.

"There's not censorship as there was in the Soviet Union," said the centre's director Oleg Panfilov, "but there is self-censorship, there's internal editorial censorship, when editors are too scared to give information, and there's censorship by owners."

The Kremlin has also come under fire in Washington and other Western capitals, but insists there is nothing to apologise for.

Putin told a gathering of world media executives in June that Russia's media law "is recognised as one of the most liberal in the world." And last week, his close advisor Vladislav Surkov dismissed allegations of anti-opposition bias on state-run television as "a matter of taste." [I think they stole this line from Rupert Murdoch]

Nikolai Svanidze, a presenter on state-owned Rossiya channel, even suggests that Russians actually demand one-sided news.

"Our guests from the United States and European countries may not understand what I'm talking about, but the classic Soviet viewer is not used to alternatives," he said. "It's tiring to have a choice because you have to think."

The Kremlin's defenders also point to the lively Internet scene in Russia and several high-quality newspapers which frequently publish criticism of the authorities.

But experts said newspapers and Internet sites have a puny impact compared to the three national television channels, which reach almost all this vast country's 143 million people. Serious newspapers rarely have circulations of much more than 100,000.

"There are still media outlets that are not controlled, but those voices are almost totally irrelevant in Russian politics and with the Russian people," said Maria Lipman, an expert on Russian politics with the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.

"Free voices are for all practical purposes dissident voices."

A free media was seen by many as one of the biggest achievements of former president Boris Yeltsin's rule, reversing abruptly from 2000 when Putin took over.

Putin accused media barons of trying to undermine the state and in 2001, state-run gas company Gazprom took over the trailblazing television channel NTV. Several leading publications were shut down.

Gazprom has since gone on to buy Ekho Moskvy radio and the once highly authoritative daily Izvestia, while other Kremlin-linked businesses have also moved into the media sector.

But Margarita Simonyan, head of the new English-language 24-hour channel Russia Today and a rising media star, says that press freedom under Yeltsin is a myth.

"Television was as much an instrument for corporate aims as any other," she said. "The idea that television was free in the 1990s is hilarious."

Simonyan also defended the blanket coverage given to the Kremlin on the main channels.

"The state channels show the president of Russia," she said. "State television should tell the people what the state is doing."

Sergei Parkhomenko, who lost his job as editor of the Itogi news magazine under Putin, blamed Russian society.

"Freedom of speech came as a gift. It fell from the sky. But people quietly let it go. Now they struggle to remember why it is they need it," he said.

They're rioting in France, but not in China.

And why is it that it normally wouldn't even occur to us to wonder if Iran's women would plot some violent revolt?

Injustice isn't the major factor in unrest.

Lately I can't decide whether ignoring the Stafford Act and the National Response Plan and "blame gaming" locals in Louisiana, or claiming Plame wasn't covert, is my favorite forehead crease among those who bow their heads. They're both great - its like a reflex that forces the most loyal Party cheerleaders to kick themselves in the nuts whenever you trigger it.

Obviously, she was covert. And we have the permanent records of who got this wrong, and who admits it, and who'se a shameless liar.

If I got this wrong, I would apologize now. It's bad enough to have bowed your head for this for any amount of time, but just look at it... this isn't tax policy we're talking about here. This is deliberately outing a covert officer working WMD proliferation, for petty political revenge. And revenge over what? It was to threaten someone for doing the brave, patriotic thing, standing up to power, and blowing the whistle on a conspiracy to endanger American troops and intelligence agents, to justify a war with lies that can't be justified by telling the plain truth.

Of course, I relish the alternative almost as much. If you still don't admit Plame was covert, you're showing your new opinion of Bush's white house, which opened itself up to obstruction charges to conceal their not actually having committed a crime. Or perhaps you suddenly have a new opinion about special prosecutors. These are even funnier poles to skewer yourself on, in my book.

(Daniel Goetz is currently serving in Samarra, Iraq. Read his blog here.)

"Seven months ago, my service in the army was to have terminated. Instead, I am in Iraq for the second time. I sit next to a DOD contractor whose job is identical to mine. Except he makes $120,000 more, works four hours less, and visits home four times more often than I do.

I am not alone in my anger and humiliation. When we were here in 2003, there was anger, but there is a difference between anger and bitter hatred. The atmosphere of discontent is thick and contagious. Even soldiers not stop-lossed feel The Betrayal. They know it might be them next time. Dissent will not change anything for us now because our voices are muted. Still, there is hope. It is that in twenty years, it will be these men and women in office. Perhaps, that alone should make me feel better. I don't think it is enough, though, for our wounded and fallen. I can't speak for them, of course. Not yet, at least."

Ellem entered the fray on the "tax cuts for the rich debate" by posting a quote and a link to some conservative propaganda on the subject. Before reading on, go have a look. The quote, at least, is quite brief and to the point.

Anyway, it got me thinking.

The quoted portion deals with how much federal income tax is paid by rich people, and how little by poor people.

The irony is that this article quietly relies on a frightening trend - that the gap between rich and poor is growing rather dramatically. I know most of you have heard that the rich are getting much richer. So, if your income goes up, you pay more taxes. That's why "the rich" are "paying so much more income taxes lately."

That's all that makes this sinister parlor trick work. They took the scary income disparity stats and tried to make them useful by turning them into "tax disparity" stats.

This relationship holds even when the rich are also getting big tax breaks, which they are.

The article never really disputes that, either. At its best, it's just a written attempt to make you think that's a good thing.

Why is this ironic? Big dollar tax breaks focused on the rich have a big effect on government income - as this article handily illustrates. When the government gets less money, eventually, it has to spend less. This will help widen the gap between rich and poor even further. Amazingly, as much as it's fashionable to hate government, that is it's job. It's our robin hood, taking from the rich and giving the poor science classes.

When the government has less money, the schools get even more crowded. The kids of the middle and lower classes will be even less able to compete, less socially mobile, more desperate for fewer jobs. There's less money for policing; crime will rise. These are just a few things that happen; there are so many more. For instance, disaster relief won't be up to snuff. Today's unlucky will be more likely to become lifetime sufferers (and burdens). American poverty will gradually continue to grow in scope and severity.

This is why, in places like this Washington Post article, you can see a tax policy story look so completely different. Remember, America got rich, and smart, not with microgovernment and laissez faire, but with the liberal, progressive policies it's had for so many years. We got there by narrowing these massive income disparities.

We used to measure sucess by our degree of equality, not by the size of our mansions.

I could go on about this article a little more. If you just look at a few more details, it becomes obvious what a trick it is.

Do you notice how it never actually talks about "tax?"

Yes, that's right. It only talks about "federal income tax," not "tax."

They are hoping you might not notice, or think about the difference.

Federal income tax is only one part of how the government (federal, state, and local) collects money. It's usually the most progressive part. Most taxes are already flat - things like sales tax or gasoline tax, for instace, are the same no matter how wealthy you are.

If you want to talk simply and honestly about tax policy as a whole, you talk about "tax." If you want to deceive and confuse people, you talk only about "federal income tax," and leave out the whole picture, like this conservative writer did.

Now, "flat tax" may seem efficient and more "inherently" fair. There's actually an interesting argument there, because there is certainly a lot of merit to simplifying the way we collect taxes. The IRS is invasive, insanely complex, and hugely wasteful.

But, flat tax has a dark side. It's also a way of saying, "tax that affects poor people most." Think about it. Sales tax, and gasoline tax are a rounding error for a millionare, and a major factor in the life of a McDonalds employee. That's true even though the millionare can drive a lot bigger car, and buy a lot more stuff than the minimum wage earner (if he wants to).

So, is less progressive, or just plain flat, tax really a good idea?

The conservative writer makes no argument for this case. He just assumes you already agree. Most of what he does is actually just insult the New York Times. By the way, does name calling make you right? Or does it make you look like you couldn't think of something smarter to say?

If you want to learn about economics, who do you want to talk to? The school bully? Or the wimpy smart kid he's beating up?

The writer probably thinks he'll get away with his tricks because nobody else is going to give his readers a better explanation.

Well, here goes.

Here's a question for you.

Is capitalism a game that rewards the winner?

Over time, does wealth beget wealth?

Rich people can loan money to poor people and make interest just for sitting back in their chair and waiting for the checks to arrive. (Of course, they can only do this safely when there's a healthy government to enforce the law, so they don't get stiffed.) They can buy property and rent it (as long as the courts and police enforce deeds and leases). They can invest in the market (as long as the SEC looks after their investments). They can go to good schools, and send their kids to good schools (much much better than your public schools!). They can get healthcare when they need it (their doctors are great, since they came from a big pool of well educated citizens). If they have an idea for how to start up a business, they don't have to raise money (and give up most of their profits in advance). They simply start one. If it succeeds, they keep all the profits (minus some taxes, although many larger corporations have ways of avoiding paying taxes ). If they want to buy a home, they just buy it. They don't take a loan, that means they really pay six times the price over decades, like most of us. For that matter, if they don't want to pay as much in tax, they can hire experts and attorneys to help them pay less. That's one of those economies of scale you keep hearing about.

It actually happens that the winners have every single advantage in this game. So, they keep right on winning, bigger and bigger with each generation.

If there is nothing to stop them, wealthy families almost always stay wealthy, and poor families have an insurmountable set of barriers keeping them poor.

In our society right now, though, there are lots of things to stop them. Lots of policies and rules. Progressive taxation. That includes things like estate taxes (Republicans call it the "death" tax, although it's really the "Paris Hilton tax"). Labor laws (creating weekends, overtime, etc). Public education. State universities. Strangely, this is exactly the list of things that the Republicans continue to hurt.

All this is so well established that the problem of "wealth begetting wealth" is a recognizably biblical concept, taken from ancient religions including Christianity. Even thousands of years ago, the writers of holy texts were grappling with this issue. And they came up with things like forbidding usury. I'm told even Catholics are technically not supposed to lend money at interest, though obviously in most religions we ignore most of the rules, most of the time.

There are lots of admonitions about the concentration of wealth in our moral codes, and for good reason. Just as communism keeps the individual from prospering, it seems there is another extreme to be concerned about as well.

Have you ever wondered what really happens when a country "goes Republican?" Is there any nation that already follows these policies, and has profited as a result?

That's a good question, isn't it.

We haven't been truly "Republican" in this country in many many years, so nobody alive remembers what it was like. But even if you don't remember your history lessons, let's just make it a conceptual exercise.

If you reduce taxes, you reduce the government.

Many would cheer.

"Good riddance. Government is evil. When we get rid of it altogether, everything will be great. The free market can solve everything."

Well, what's interesting is, when you get rid of government altogether, you no longer have a market.

You have anarchy.

Without government, you have no rules, no law. There are no police, and no army. No currency. No courts. No borders. The strong simply take from the weak. Society is ruled by its most brutal and ruthless elements.

The delicate machinery of agriculture, healthcare, and education crumble like a sandcastle under the first few of the endless waves of violence. Then you get famine. Disease. Suffering on a "biblical" level. Parts of Africa are like this today.

Those guys are begging for government to come back. You can watch it on TV.

"OK, OK, not that little government. When need some. Just not too much."

How much is enough?

"Just an army, to defend the borders, police, to defend property, courts, to settle disputes and allow fair commerce, and of course, you need lots of laws about doing business fairly. Common law, as they call it. Firemen, if you must (most are volunteer, though). No more NEA, no more EPA, no more welfare, no more food stamps, no more state universities. No more subsidies and pork barrels. Public schools are up for debate."

What did you leave out? Trade and labor laws. So the poor go back to working 16 hour days, 7 days a week, and so do their young children.

Occupational health and safety. So when they're injured on the job, they're thrown to the curb to beg.

And because you left out welfare, they die there.

Aristocrats love this kind of setup, because it's "stable." Desperate people struggling just to survive aren't going to become entrepeneurs and compete with the entrenched business owners. The rich not only get richer, but they stay richer.

For that matter, a poor person starting a business usually needs a loan. Who'se going to give him one? There are no rules against discrimination against him, and no bureaucracy to enforce them. If the rich people don't feel like making a competitor for themselves, they'll simply refuse.

"What? Why does the guy at the bank care if someone wants to open another general store? Wouldn't that be good for him?"

What if the guy who owns the store also owns the bank? Or what if they're brothers? Or friends?

Sound silly? It used to happen all the time, when there were no rules.

With no social mobility, there is nothing to threaten established concerns. Ironically, markets are no longer very efficient at all. Monopolies thrive. The economy spirals downwards. Because most people have so little (if any) disposable income or leisure time, there is very little consumer-driven economic activity (hint: our current economy is roughly 2/3rds consumer-driven). Literacy plummets. Lawless ghettos spread across the land. Armed insurrections and guerrilla warfare fester. Sound familiar, amigo?

So, on paper, your banana republic isn't so hot. Of course, from inside the plantation house, life is good. You have servants. Imported goods, the best imported technology, for instance. And you send your kids to America or Europe to study, so they'll get culture and a good education, away from the creeping entropy of the world you created for yourself.

"I wouldn't have it so bad. I'm not a yokel, I have skills, and I have rights."

Where did you get your skills?

From public school? Public university? Or from people who went to either one?

Or did you learn from your family? Were you home schooled? Did you learn a trade from your mom or dad? That was how they used to do it, back in the feudal days.

And where did you get your rights? You just abolished most of them, and destroyed your ability to enforce most of the rest.

"Why is everyone suddenly working so hard? I know we used to work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, and have child labor, but I don't remember why."

Well, there are a lot of people out there in the world. Most of them are starving and desperate and perfectly happy to work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, and let their kids do the same, just to avoid death from starvation.

You have to compete with all of them. And now there are no more rules to protect you, so you just have to work harder than them, for less, if you want a job. And since there's no social safety net, your alternative is to starve in the street.

"Fuck this. I'll go live somewhere else. I'll grow my own food, live by my own efforts."

There is nowhere else. It's all taken.

"Why am I competing with the whole world, anyway? Why not just with other Americans?"

It's called Free Trade, also known as "Laissez Faire" capitalism.

Maybe you don't want to compete in a labor market with nations that allow slavery. But you have a tiny laissez faire government. You have no complex trade regulations, or the means to really enforce them. You don't want them either, right? You believe in free trade, don't you?

"OK, forget free trade. Let's close the borders."

OK, be my guest. They'll kick you out of the party for that, though.

"Why are there so many desperate people, anyway?"

Well, everyone loves to have babies. Strangely, the more desperate and impoverished we are, the more babies we seem to have. There are billions of people now. Some people say we should slow down, but...

Strangely, some religions are telling people to have even more kids. And not only that, they're telling people not to use birth control (and never, ever have abortions). They're also fighting against effective sex education. This often means that little kids have kids of their own, and they all become impoverished laborers, rather than getting a decent education.

Even more strangely, rich people seem to love these religions. They often support them with their enormous financial resources.

The Republican party seems to support and promote only religions that take these strange views on birth control, sex education, and abortion.

"You're lying. None of this works like you say."

You can read all this for yourself in your American History textbook. Unless the Republicans have re-written it already, that is.

The current Republican leadership is absolutely capable of rewriting American history to make their policies look better. You may already realize it, even if you just think of it as "correcting liberal bias" - Republican code for "anything that contradicts what we say."

"OK... so how did we fix this mess?"

We've done it all before, and it's not so complicated. You make the government more "liberal." By this I mean, have a government that dares to allow the will of the people to redistribute wealth.

Before "liberal" governments, we simply had bloody, disorganized revolutions instead - when the injustices of the system would inevitably build up to the point where people couldn't take it anymore, and would erupt in violence. Throughout history, this has happened over, and over, and over again.

The idea behind liberal governments is to stop this cycle of abuse and violence and use democracy to live in a sustainable and fair way.

It's basically just about people empowering themselves, saying things like, "This government is supposed to serve everybody, but almost everything it's doing is for the idle rich. The rich get more, so they should pay more."

And then you use the money to make social programs and policies that help the poor.

Strangely, this was also an enormous economic success. It turned out that the great teeming mob of "the underclass" wasn't really genetically doomed to be stupid and poor... they were just being oppressed. When they were unleased, they built great cities. They vaulted themselves to the moon. Old money was suddenly competing with new money. The streets, foreigners said, were paved with gold.

We just spent the last few hundred years clawing our way back from the Republican way, step by painful step. Republicans seem to want to go back into the past. Almost all of their policies (from taxes, deregulation and privatization, to the unamerican marriage of church and state) are ancient - relics from the days when we had a tiny class of super-wealthy and a sea of poverty.

Defenders of capitalism claim its greatest ideal is how it treats us equally - that anyone can make it if they're smart and they work hard. "Free Market" Capitalism knows no class barriers. It allows for social mobility.

Of course, we already know there is no such thing as a "free market." Just markets with different kinds of rules.

It turns out that the social mobility that makes capitalism so great is driven by the same socialist rules that Republicans hate.

Socialism is all about fixing the parts of capitalism that reward the winners and punish the losers.

To do it, Socialism gives us things like really good public education, and the leisure and safety to pursue it.

Well, there are lots of ways to have a socialist policies. Europe does it one way, and we do it another. Yes, that's right. The America you know is deeply socialist. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid... And of course, highly progressive taxes, and a host of other rules and programs. None of these ways are perfect, or even all that great... but we do know one thing. They are better than what we used to have.

We used to have a catalogue of injustices and misery, perpetrated by wealthy aristocrats trying to stay on top without actually having to work. Today we have big government, and progressive taxes and social programs, and a great deal of success... at least, until just recently.

There would be one guilty pleasure in watching Republicans succeed in their mission, and take us back into the past. That would be seeing the look in their eyes, as one by one they finally realize there aren't that many seats at the manor house.

Saw this today...

I think we need a better word for what Karl Rove and Bush do than "spin". "Spin" suggests that there is a generally acknowledged reality which "each side" tries to put the best face or gleam on. Rove acknowledges no such reality.
      As we see with the Republican response to Hurricane Katrina, Rove and Bush's approach is to create an entirely fictional master narrative. It isn't just a matter of a lie here or a lie there. It's a completely fabricated alternate reality that competes with the truth.
      The point of this false narrative is not so much to delude ordinary people as it is to keep the Republican base from straying off the reservation: the base wants to support Republicans, and they just need any excuse, no matter how feeble, to hang their hats on. Give them a narrative that they can repeat, and they will run with it. It does not matter if the narrative is inconsistent, as the Republicans are past masters of "doublethink" -- the art of believing that two incompatible things are true at the same time.
      A bonus of the false narrative is that it plants doubts in the minds of those people who aren't paying too much attention, and can generate pseudo-factoids (e.g. "John Kerry faked going to Vietnam") that can play into the unconscious judgment. But the main point is to keep the base in line.
      The problem with producing the false narrative is that it has to be generated and propagated early in order to compete successfully with the truth; it doesn't do much good if people already have another idea in their heads. That means that countering the false narrative also has to start early and be hammered hard: it has to be undermined, not just lie by lie, but comprehensively, and the act of creating the false narrative has to be held up as the monstrous Goebbels-ism that it is. It has to become so disreputable that nobody will ever dare to do it again. We need to destroy their ability to lie. -WIds

And with that, let's take a look at a good example of how this works.

For those coming in late, this is recent leg in a discussion between ellem and I over Bush's role in disaster relief efforts in New Orleans. Ellem has supplied two new stories, both with their genesis in one Bob Williams, President and Senior Research Fellow for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, which is a conservative think tank in Washington State. He credits himself as "an ex-State Representative in Washington during the time of the eruption of Mount St. Helens." That too. One is written by Bob himself, the other by an ABC correspondent who appears to have based his work on Bob's.

They attempt to blame local and state officials for failures during the post-Katrina relief effort in New Orleans. To do it, they manipulated quotes and outright lied; even more strangely, their claims are easily disprovable.

Cutting to the chase, the President (in this case, Bush) and his government were responsible for disaster relief, and for good (hopefully obvious) reasons. There is no plausible way for Bush to "pass the buck" and blame others:

"...Once the President declared the State of Emergency on August 26, 2005, it triggered something called 'An Incident of National Significance.' According to the United States National Response Plan, this has quite a few consequences, all of which are designed to put the Federal Government in charge, eliminate delays based on paperwork, and eliminate any need for local officials to ask for help."

But I wouldn't want to deprive you of a detailed point-by-point.
I'll be extensively quoting an already-complete debunking of the article, since there seems to be little to add to it.

The following in italics are quotes from the ABC article:

• "New Orleans' own comprehensive emergency plan raises the specter of 'having large numbers of people ... stranded' and promises 'the city ... will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas.'

  'Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves,' the plan states.

  When Hurricane Katrina hit, however, that plan was not followed completely." ...

  'If the [comprehensive emergency] plan were implemented, lives would have been saved,' Williams said."

  From the analysis:

  "The complete paragraph this quotation was taken from contains the following sentence which was not mentioned in the quote: 'Those evacuated will be directed to temporary sheltering and feeding facilities as needed.' [emph added] When this sentence is included, it becomes clear that the citywide network of busses to bring poor and disabled citizens to the Superdome prior to the hurricane making landfall was the action this section refers to. The Mayor followed the plan exactly, and the source used an out of context quotation to push a blatant falsehood at your reporter. [emph added] The fact that the Mayor set up emergency bussing to get the poor residents to the Superdome undoubtedly saved many lives."

  "The City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan Annex I: Hurricanes can be found at the following URL: http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26"

• "As one FEMA official told ABC News, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco failed to submit a request for help in a timely manner."

  "In fact, the official request for help has been available on the Internet for anyone who has even the slightest inclination to search for it. The official request for help signed by Governor Blanco is dated August 28, 2005 as can be seen on the original document located at http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

  "Certainly, a request for help several days prior to the arrival of a hurricane cannot possibly be characterized as 'untimely.' According to the press release at 'The President today declared a major disaster exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts in the area struck by Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 29, 2005, and continuing.'

  "In fact, the President had already proactively declared a State of Emergency in Louisiana on August 26, 2005 according to the press release at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050827-1.html

  "Therefore, it appears that the Mayor of New Orleans did follow the portion of the NO-CEMP which your 'conservative think-tank president' claimed he didn't. It also appears that the Governor of Louisiana requested federal aid on August 28, and the President promised federal aid on August 29. This proves that attempts to blame the late response on an untimely request by Governor Blanco are patently false, and can be proved false by easily obtainable documents anyone with an internet connection has easy access to."

• And now, onto some more general matters. Let's discuss more generally the notion that federal agencies could have been prevented from responding due to the Governor not specifically asking for them. This is completely untrue.

  With respect to the previously named source and this one as well, I will now quote liberally and at length from the commentary of others, as well as the Stafford Act and the United States National Response Plan.

  --

  "All PRESIDENTIALLY DECLARED DISASTERS AND EMERGENCIES UNDER THE STAFFORD ACT ARE CONSIDERED INCIDENTS OF NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE." (NRP, 7) (This is a CRITICAL piece of information which your reporters don't seem to have noticed. In fact, the initial emergency declaration from the White House mentions the Stafford Act by name.)"

  "When an incident or potential incident is of such severity, magnitude, and/or complexity that it is considered an Incident of National Significance, the Secretary of Homeland Security initiates actions to prepare for, respond to, and recover from the incident." (NRP, 15)

  "The President leads the Nation in responding efficiently and ensuring the necessary resources are applied quickly and effectively to all Incidents of National Significance. (NHP, 15)

  "The Secretary of Defense authorizes Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) for domestic incidents as directed by the President or when consistent with military readiness operations and appropriate under the circumstances and the law.

  "Imminently serious conditions resulting from any civil emergency may require immediate action to save lives, prevent human suffering, or to mitigate property damage.

  "When such conditions exist and time does not permit approval from higher headquarters, local military commands and responsible officers from the DOD are authorized by DOD directive and pre-approved by the Secretary of Defense to take necessary action to response to the request of civil authorities." (NPR, 42)

  "Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited, or under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude." (NRP, 44)
  

"After reading these quotations from the United States National Response Plan, it should be clear that the Federal Government faced no impediments to action due to paperwork requirements, or lack of communication with state or local officials. The President put into action a plan which allows Federal Agencies to suspend standard procedures regarding requests for assistance."

--

Additional notes:

• Federal departments and agencies are EXPECTED to provide:
  • initial and/or ongoing response, when warranted, under their own authority and funding;
    
  • alert, notification, pre-positioning and timely delivery of resources;
  • proactive support for catastrophic or potentially catastrophic incidents using protocols for expedited delivery of resources. (NRP, 6)
• FEMA press release ackowledging "...President Bush authorized the aid under an emergency disaster declaration issued following a review of FEMA's analysis of the state's request for federal assistance..." dated August 27th.
• When President Bush declared Katrina a disaster (link), he EXPLICITY invokes Title V of the Stafford Act. Thus, Katrina became an Incident of National Significance on August 26, THREE DAYS before landfall, and FIVE DAYS before Chertoff mistakenly thought he had to declare it as such.

--

Final thoughts...

I've now seen and dispatched three shockingly deceitful attempts to cover up Bush's failures and weasel out of his responsbilities, each one more brazen, awful, and evilly clever than the last. As far as I can tell there was hardly anything true in any of them.

What's really surprising about this is that what's happened is so obvious. Propagandists usually know to skirt the edges of the obvious, rather than attacking it head on.

The truth is simple. He had the opportunity, the authority, and the means to save those people, and he didn't do it, either through incompetence, or indifference. You decide which alternative you think is worse.

They begged him for help, to build up their protection against storms, and he failed them. They begged him to rescue them when the storm came, and he sent them Michael Brown, Arabian Horse Expert. They died by the thousands, Americans, in the streets of a destroyed American city.

No other first-world nation would willingly suffer a leader after so gross, so callous a failure.

I'm morbidly curious to see what comes next... but in my opinion, this hysterical fit of the Right-wing propaganda machine is almost as big a news story as the hurricane itself. The hurricane is over. Bush and his government's calamity of error and negligence in the relief effort is winding down. But these bits of propaganda tell a story of disaster after disaster to come, where the people in charge might no longer be held accountable to their superiors, the people of this country. They show us a future where even human tragedies on this scale can be bathed clean in the stew of improbable lies and cult-like party devotion.

They've finally gone too far. To the extent that propaganda like this paves the way for future bloody catastrophes by our government, there is blood on the hands of these propagandists.

Ellem posted a David Frum essay the other day - a response to recent criticism of Bush.

I am really looking for anything like an honest defense of Bush on this one. I haven't seen one yet. Not one. What I am seeing are a lot of rapid-fire, ugly, dishonest defenses of him, which makes it look like everyone on the right feels he's guilty but is sticking up for him anyway. But, for me to make a comment like that is exactly the kind of useless, generalizing, straw-man anecdote that this essay starts off with. Except that, in addition to the straw-man fallacy, this essay adds a fresh collection of ugly, dishonest defenses. I'm shocked people are callous enough to associate their names with this, let alone expect anyone to be suckered now.

As neoconservatism runs its course, people will gradually find the writers of essays like these to be worse than what they slyly try to apologize for. Copy-pasting it and leaving the links to citations out of it does it a great service, ellem.

The facts are painfully clear. (NBC news)

New Orleans was well known to be a time bomb, and they weren't given the funds they needed to prepare for big storms. The government clearly had the money; the notorious $200 million Alaskan bridge underscores the point all too well. Would it definitely have saved the city? Some people are desperate to tell you no. They are lying. The truth is simple. We'll never know.

Bush put a fool of a crony with no experience in charge of FEMA, and the agency apparently suffered further under the numerous (and no doubt, expensive) reorganizations that took place under the aegis of his new Department of Homeland Security. Ostensibly it was all meant to better prepare us for terrorism, which we can now see was also a failure. The only difference between a hurricane breaking the levee and a terrorist blowing it up is that, with a hurricane, you always have some warning in advance.

What does this article give us?

• A link indicating that one levee break was in a recently upgraded section - a horrifyingly dishonest defense of the people who stopped the levee fortification projects. Obviously maintenance on them continued. But with their funding cut by Bush and the Republicans, they weren't able to do the level of work that they needed. And not just on the levees, but on pumps, on emergency equipment, on planning and preparedness, you name it.
• Then it gives us a link discussing relative National Guard troop strength and deployments. My first instinct is to fact check it, from too-long experience with blogs like this, but... Oh my. It's a trick. It doesn't matter if their fact checks or not. Here we all are, watching TV together, watching Fox News reporters crying into the camera and begging for refugees to be allowed to walk out of the city, because there are no troops, no police, no food, and no water, days and days after the disaster... no troops and police, that is, except the ones guarding the bridge, keeping the refugees in.

  We already know what happened. And this weasel is using this stupid trick to try to rewrite history. He's writing about troop strength. Look, it's very simple: it doesn't matter what the number was. What these people reported from their own city speaks for itself. The point is not up for debate - because it will be answered with clips from newscasts, and you will finally meet the point where your ability to talk utterly fails to change reality. The evidence is all over the TV. It was a failure of planning, and/or a failure of leadership. You decide which is worse. The fact that redstate.org says 8,000 reservists were available to help them was not a great comfort to the tens of thousands of people that were left alone for six days in the disaster area. It would sound pretty hollow to the people who starved, who dehydrated, who were raped or shot to death. They were begging for help on television. We heard it over and over. "Where are the troops? There are no troops!" If you guys really fall for this memory hole shit, that's what is shocking, and that's what is sickening.

  This is what it comes down to. Redstate.org can't say "the troops were there helping, the liberal media just didn't show them." They can't say "They were there, but they couldn't help." They're reduced to saying "well, 8,000 troops were available in theory..."

• A link discussing how some police joined in looting. OK... irrelevant.
• A link that apparently implies New Orleans owes its fate to the exposure of a Republican congressperson's sexual practices during the Clinton scandal. You see? "You'd better mind your own business with regards to Republican House Speakers' marital infidelity, otherwise... you might find disaster preparedness funding drying up, and only yourself to blame." No, seriously. You just can't make this stuff up.

If this all weren't so miserable, I would actually be laughing. This essay smells more and more, not just of corpses, but of desperation... of strained loyalty and fear, of someone who'se been asked to explain something truly unexplainable, and knows they are failing, but must press on... and of fanatically unquestioning, inexplicable, indeed, unamerican level of loyalty to Bush, that would drive people to grasp at it, repeat it, post it, without knowing (or perhaps even caring?) how awful it is.

Most ridiculous of all, Republicans, as the bodies pile up, still unable to answer the charges against Bush, are inventing charges they can answer.

• I am starting to hear people making this a climate change issue. OK, let's be clear, wherever you stand on climate change, it doesn't matter. This is not about climate change. We knew the levees needed work and Bush didn't do it. If terrorists sabotaged a levee, would it take 6 days to respond to people stuck at the convention center?
• I'm hearing that the accusations "contradict each other." No one is exactly pointing out what the contradictions are, or worse, like this essay does, their "contradictions" are the series of mistakes that Bush has made. They literally close their eyes, recite the list, and pretend it sounds like they contradict each other, rather than that Bush simply made a series of mistakes. I imagine this theme has room to run; perhaps later they'll find two different liberals who'se ideas actually do conflict, and that will somehow hopefully provide a further lure to the fish.
• "Good God, what is wrong with these people? Will they ever learn to see somebody else's misfortune as something more than their political opportunity? This, from the most ruthless exploiters of 9/11 in the country.

This article has the appalling gall to ask, "is there not something indecent about the haste with which the American left avidly tries to turn this terrible disaster to political account?"

This begs the question: What crime cannot be explained away by this foolproof answer? What couldn't Bush do wrong, that wouldn't be OK after all, as long as "the Left's" hastened indecently to prosecute him? If Bush shot a child on national television, would we hear this same universal, generic refrain: "Look, we'll have a study, we'll convene a Congressional investigation... perhaps the facts will come in and we will indeed discover Bush is a child-murderer. But in the meantime, isn't there something indecent about the Left's rush to use this for political gain?"

It is not a problem for people to criticize Bush for fucking up. He and his people fucked up really bad, and there are now thousands of bodies floating in the ruined husk of a major American city. Most of them were not killed by the hurricane. They died afterwards, waiting for help. Some waited in their homes, in buildings, in hospitals... Some went or were taken to places where help should have been... and they died there, after waiting without food and water, wondering why after almost a week of unimaginable horror, the only thing the few visible troops were doing was keeping them trapped in the city. And we had to sit in front of our televisions and watch it.

"Why can't we act first, investigate afterward, and let blame and credit be apportioned as they are due, when they are due?" BECAUSE SIX DAYS AFTER THE DISASTER, THERE WERE PEOPLE DOWN THERE BEGGING FOR THEIR LIVES, DESPERATELY WONDERING WHY THERE WAS NO HELP. As much as I'm sure a professional Bush apologist would love for everyone to, you know, just calm down and not be so angry about it all, we watched on television as people starved and drowned, all while desperately wondering where their help was... for... six... days... straight... We watched while a shockingly idiotic Michael Brown (A Bush crony appointed to head FEMA, despite having no experience to do so) embarrassed himself in television interviews. We watched while stories came back of outrageous confusion and ineptitude... Bush survives because propaganda buys your anger with words. But, as the blubbering Geraldo Rivera and the furious, shell-shocked Shephard Smith showed us last week, there are some things you cannot paper over with words, and some things even professional propagandists cannot be paid to say.

There aren't really strong enough words for being forced to wait in a drowning building without food or water for six days, surrounded by the growing number of floating dead. Not being allowed to leave. Being menaced by the troops meant to protect you, if you dare to try to cross a bridge, or run after them as they drive away, begging them for water. Not when we have a better way. Not when the reason for it is only the callous incompetence of politicians.

If you are calm about this, you are not a human being. And this is exactly what I would call David Frum's ugly, ugly essay, and all those who would repeat it without noticing or being able to tell if any of it is honest. This kind of propaganda, fiddling while Rome is burning, is inhuman.

--

Ready for more? Here's a quick run through the Ben Stein special:

"George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans." A rather audacious lie, considering how widely documented it is that he cut funding for protecting the city.

"George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell." Actually, if he had funded preparations, and if he had competent professionals instead of zero-experience, idiot cronies running organized disaster relief, many of these things could have been lessened or prevented.

Perhaps the federal government could save money in future disasters by declaring in advance that since a destroyed city will have some lawless elements, we can therefore refuse to help everyone in the city, since it is all their collective fault.

"George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been" I doubt this, but regardless, I don't think this is about racism either. If anything, it's just about callous indifference to poor people. This is laissez faire capitalism in a nutshell: poor people can't afford a car to escape, and a hotel room or out of town relatives to escape to? They deserve what they get for being poor.

"There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency." Not so. (Dated august 1st.)

"If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God..." Right... I knew this was coming. I figured the Right would get around to claiming the left was "blaiming the hurricane on Bush." It's the final insult... of their own readers.

"Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day." By now we've been led down the garden path to where not taking our medicine won't help us if we're not really sick. Nicely done.

"The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. And I knew this was coming too. At some point, all outspoken critics of Bush have to be vilified.

Heap it on, Ben Stein. They have nothing to lose now, anyway.

"Why is it that the snipers who shot at emergency rescuers trying to save people in hospitals and shelters are never mentioned except in passing..." Hmm... How about hundreds of mentions an hour across all the major TV networks, for days on end? Don't worry, I'm sure the criticism will intensify if they pretend their shooting was justified.

"What special abilities does the media have for deciding how much blame goes to the federal government as opposed to the city government" Skipped civics class, apparently.

"If able-bodied people refuse to obey a mandatory evacuation order for a city, have they not assumed the risk that ill effects will happen to them?" Ah yes... the mandatory evacuation that provided no transportation for those without means to travel. Ah well, if they can't leave on their own power, let 'em drown. We have to weed out the weak, is that it, Ben Stein?

"When the city government simply ignores its own sick and hospitalized and elderly people in its evacuation order, is Mr. Bush to blame for that?" If Malibu was destroyed, I'm sure Mr. Stein would like his federal taxes to cooperate with his state and city taxes in boating him away from the wreckage... instead of bungling for nearly a week while penning him inside it.

"Is there any problem in the world that is not Mr. Bush's fault..." Oh that poor, downtrodden Bush. All these terrible problems aren't his fault. He's just the President. It's not like he takes any responsibility for his budget, or his policy, or his appointments to federal agencies, or... or... He's just misunderstood.

All in all, a stunningly cynical, manipulative, cold-hearted evil collection of words. If you believe in God, you definitely go to hell for things like this.

So, who is AtariAmarok? Who is this guy who calls himself "Concern is a faggot"? And what's with all these weird anonymous posts?

Since this is my first stalker, and the story is a pretty good one, I thought I would provide some background so that everyone can appreciate it.

Our story starts some time ago in a Slashdot article posted by CmdrTaco, called Mathematics of the Social Security "Crisis".

Reflecting on the fact that a lot of really brazen misinformation about Social Security is passed off as news, I posted a short rant about the problems with accuracy and balance in the media, ending: "The heart of the matter is that when Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity lie about something, no one is yet able to mod them down."

That clearly struck a nerve. It went on the moderation roller coaster, I suspect because I hadn't signaled my "balance" by including Dan Rather in my list of examples. In retrospect, maybe I would have, if only he had lied about Social Security...

I got some responses, too: hundreds. Some were sophisticated and some not-so-sophisticated. I was immediately branded a Liberal, and all the usual suspects arrived in the tired parade of Conservative outrage over my temerity in criticizing their salaried propagandists (in a story about Conservative propaganda). As is often the case here on Slashdot, plenty of people shot back, and they wrote some excellent, solid responses.

So, can we talk honestly about an issue on the Conservative agenda? Or can a cheerleading team using a few notorious methods drown out and confuse everyone, altering their perception of the truth?

One of the less inspiring responses came from a gentleman named AtariAmarok.

His opening protests went along these lines:

• O'Reilly and Hannity are "commentators, and not journalists". (This is funnier in retrospect. The "Fair and Balanced" network's "No Spin Zone" shouldn't be criticized for lying because it's "commentary")
• "neither are 'paid to lie' by anyone". (They don't do it for free, honey)
• This was followed by the amusing admission: "They are paid to be themselves. If they lie, that is part of their beliefs."
• He ended with one of the weakest defenses of Fox-style bias that I know of: all journalists are (the devious implication is, equally) biased.
• I should mention he prefaced this with the idea that "journalism ... has nothing to do with 'democracy'...".

Because it was so easy, I answered him, along with a number of other posts, and this began an exchange that very quickly grew in scale and scope. Two things contributed to this prodigious thread.

First, AtariAmarok, whatever his shortcomings, likes to post a lot. A quick browse through his extraordinary posting history indicates that if he does have a job, it is almost certainly as a professional Slashdot poster. He often writes dozens of posts a day, frequently starting early in the morning and churning out one after another into the evening. And he likes to answer within hours or even minutes of getting a response.

Second, as others bowed out of the argument, AtariAmarok would step in for them, sometimes responding to a single post with as many as four responses.

Unfortunately, what he had in quantity, he lacked in quality. For instance, among his additional assertions:

• Nazi propaganda didn't kill Jews. Men with guns killed jews. ("bad Nazi information killed not one single Jew or anyone else.")
• However, the allies could not have won the war without "anti-Nazi political expression ('propaganda')."
• Dan Rather should be allowed to report fake Bush Memos as news. Quotes: "I am not afraid of what Fox News ... or Dan Rather have to say." "I defend CBS news..."
• "A television station is totally incapable of censoring through the act of airing anything."
• The Fairness Doctrine is the same as Chinese-style censorship.
• The government has no place micro-managing media content.
• Porn should be legal on TV.
• ...unless, of course, it's not properly "labeled." Presumably the government manages this.
• Needless to say, the Bush administration strongly disagrees with this view. However, "liberals especially love to censor the media."
• FAIR is a "left-wing pressure group", that advocates racism
• It is unnecessary to do any work to prove this, because AtariAmarok is able to simply dictate facts. Arguments over his facts are a "diversion," and "pointless."
• Of course, he only believes what he says is a fact, "when it is factual." ("If it is mere opinion, or sarcasm, of course I don't believe it 'true' [sic].")
• By the way, this is not slander.
• CNN and the four major networks produce liberal propaganda. (i.e. he's a vast left-wing conspiracy believer)
• It's OK to actually substitute "[expression of information]" or "[advocacy of causes]" for the word "propaganda." (It's basically the same thing?)
• In fact, propaganda on TV is not only OK, "I come right out and say it is great."

His whole method of arguing is interesting. It fits a pattern that I've seen on Slashdot and elsewhere. It's worth looking at it in some detail.

• "Creative misinterpretation."
         
  • In defending Fox News's biased reporting, he pointed out they were "the first to report who was behind" 9/11. Yes, I know, it has nothing to do with bias.
           
  • I pointed this out. To try and get back on topic, I gave him a FAIR report about Fox News' biased 9/11 coverage. He responded: "Read what I said: they were lucky to first name who was behind it. Nothing to do with 9/11 commission report, which came out long after." Not only does he think it matters whether they said "Osama" first, but he apparently thinks I'm actually trying to argue that.
           
  • A few days later, he asked: "Do you have any specifics of altered TV broadcast content?" (altered, meaning, unfair or biased content.) Hmm. Like the 9/11 report I just mentioned?
           
  • I made the point that paying big salaries to read propaganda means you are "paying liars." He doesn't agree, because, "like any movement," conservatism provides "true believers" who ...would do it for free. I jokingly reply, "why pay them then?" Atari answers: "I don't give them one cent." Uh... right. Glad we cleared that up.
           
  • I say, "it's understandable to want to ban [propagandists] from the airwaves." Of course, I'm actually making the point that, instead of banning them (like the Chinese would), I just want to make sure all views get equal time on the air. AtariAmarok, of course, immediately concludes I want to ban things anyway. ("fascist.")
           
  • Creative misinterpretations are even better when combined with each other. Number one: He "misinterprets" the Fairness Doctrine as partisan political censorship. Number two: I observe that a war may have been started under false pretenses (this is the cost of propaganda). He responds, this is only a matter of "opinion." Uh, you mean Iraq, or that it could hypothetically happen at all? Finally, he fuses the two into a perfect "double-misinterpretation": "...your use of your opinion about the Iraq war as support for the idea of censoring Fox News." Bravo.
           
  • Here's a post where I point out some additional examples...
           
• "Laziness."
         
  • FAIR does a good job of documenting Fox News' bias. Clearly, to a conservative fanboy, they have to be "dealt with." I suppose many earnest partisans would have put their noses the grindstone and dug up something questionable or distracting about them, to try to bog me down in details. But AtariAmarok is a braver soul. He simply accuses them of things, and then claims all debate on the subject is moot, and we must take him at his word. When invited to give any specific examples of them doing something wrong, he first tries to avoid the question, then just claims the "facts" are "obvious," then throws in some more vague accusations, and then claims I am "setting up a straw man." (By asking if he could point to any specific thing FAIR had ever gotten wrong? Sigh...) To give you a flavor for this, here is choice quote: "You were arguing with me about the FAIR Fox 9/11 report before I ever read it. Then I read it, and found no complaints with it. You are STILL fighting.... I know plenty else [sic] about FAIR however, and can accurately describe them (fact) and to dislike their pro-censorship attitude [sic] and racism (opinion)."
           
  • Finally he goes for the gold star. AtariAmarok reveals that he does not understand the concept of backing up an argument with a source. His first attempt (on the theme that FAIR is a racist group): "Do a Google search on fair.org and race and media. Take care to look only at the links inside fair.org." Of course, google reveals no such thing.
           
  • One of the funnier moments came when AtariAmarok tried to claim that a FAIR paper about Rush Limbaugh was about 2/3rds made up. Which paper? He won't link to it. Which 2/3rds? He won't say. Yes, I know this is already funny, but it gets better. Someone actually found the paper for him, and started asking him specific questions. AtariAmarok couldn't respond. He slunk away from that thread without finishing, completely humiliated. Go, look: it's his shortest thread in the whole discussion!
           
  • More impressively, the same guy also ran down the source of his even more vague "racism" claim, and thoroughly destroyed it as well. Once again, AtariAmarok, defender of fairness, slunk off without answering.
           
• "Brazen refusal to cite sources."
         
  • "I named and described a rather famous report from a while ago. You are too lazy to look it up, but not too lazy to whine 'gimme a link'." (See above - this is the Limbaugh report someone else schooled him for lying about.)
           
  • If you don't search for his references for him, you are worse than a lazy 3rd grader.
           
  • My fourth or fifth request for sources was actually quoted by him as "[list of technicalities to change the subject]"
           
  • When I take a humorous shot at doing this same trick on him, in order to illustrate how silly the "facts are whatever I say they are" policy is, it's "off-topic and insulting ... babble." He really seems to have no idea at this point that he's been tricked into talking about himself.
           
  • Finally, after whining, crying, avoiding, pretending not to need to, intentionally (or unintentionally?) missing points and changing the subject for nearly two entire weeks of debate, spanning dozens of threads, he finally provided a single URL. This is it. Go read it. His single real "source" to back up all his anti-FAIR comments is a long, rambling, goofy amateur essay. Here's one quote, pure and unadulterated, to give you a flavor for it. "I figure I'm the least biased person I know, but still I'll have biases &, this being a 'non-scientific' survey, I'll grant myself a 10% margin of error- which seems fair." Really? Why not 9% or 11%? I dealt with it more thoroughly here.
           
  • Perhaps emboldened, he goes on to cite a url (this one, on FAIR's own website) where FAIR says "As a progressive group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information." He then demands that we recognize this is proof he has been right all along, and that this sentence is in fact an admission that FAIR is a "left-wing pressure group."
           
• "Fearless Disregard for Logic."
         
  • Fundamentally, he can't grasp a world where his political team isn't in control. Despite all his conspiracy theories, he can't actually imagine what it would be like to watch his "enemies" buying up television news networks and using them for propaganda (yes, very ironic). So, to him, a rule like the Fairness Doctrine must be bad. So no matter how obvious, how extraordinarily plain it is that there is absolutely nothing partisan in that rule, he finds it biased. No matter that it is a rule squarely aimed at stopping the views of Americans from being silenced or treated unfairly, he finds it to be censorship. And no matter that a long list of Republicans created and supported the idea over generations, he finds it to be liberal. Chanting these errors over and over again, in post after post, with unshakeable conviction, was essentially AtariAmarok's entire thesis. It is my impression that if the evidence were a vast, stormy ocean and he were literally drowning in it, he would claim he was dry with his dying breath.
           
  • Quote: "Pointing out the facts about FAIR is not slander. Whether it is name calling or insults depends on your own opinion." At that point, he was refusing to make even a single specific complaint, or give even one, single, specific URL.
           
  • Quote: "It was specifically 'fascist' for you to declare expression of political opinion as illegal." Hmm. I did? I guess he can just refuse to cite the source for this, too.
           
  • Quote: "You have only used the term 'propaganda' to involve political expression you do not like." (My response: "I advocate restoring the Fairness Doctrine. This is precisely the opposite of what you are saying." Sadly, this attempt didn't penetrate either.)
           
  • Quote (on the unimportance of propaganda): "However, the fact remains that bad Nazi information killed not one single Jew or anyone else. Bad guys with guns did the deed."
           
  • One minute, the Fairness Doctrine is a powerful menace that censors political speech. Yet this doesn't stop him from (accidentally) claiming that while it was being enforced, the liberal media were practicing their bias anyway.
           
• "Hypocrisy, as elevated to a lifestyle."
         
  • Like many green young conservatives, he's a wild-eyed free-speech radical when it comes to the television news. "We shall make no law that regulates my sacred right to say anything, even on television," they thunder. "Refer to the Constitution again," he smugly intones. But then they get kind of uncomfortable about abandoning slander or false advertising laws. Ask him whether any "indecency" on television should be regulated, and you can practically smell the smoke shooting out of his ears. He changes the subject faster than you can say "Nipple Ring." You are flying off the handle, he whines. It's "entirely off topic, and is a diversionary tactic."
           
  • His hilariously ironic way of describing the "liberal bias" of the major television networks: "NBC, ABC, CBS were then (as now) not the conservative's friend." I guess no one had yet told them that was their job. LOL.
           
  • One of my personal favorites: He claims there's no real difference between Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh. I dare him to find as many documented lies, or even close, by Franken as I can about Rush Limbaugh. He responds by saying, "There are right-wing sites that bash Franken just as there are left-wing sites that bash Limbaugh." OK, sure, but can he show us right-wing sites that do it by telling the truth? This is not a detail he has a good grasp on. Of course, he claims he can:
            "They are both the same in manner, demeanor, and overall accuracy." [emphasis added] He even lays it on thicker. "Only a real wing-nut would think that one is so much different from the other."
            But when pressed, he actually can't. He never actually gave a link to the FAIR article on Limbaugh he claimed was only "one third" true, let alone listed his complaints. Someone else actually found it for him, and he ran away scared before finding even a single thing wrong with it.
            Now, he produces a one-off right-wing hitpiece on Al Franken. Unfortunately, much like Limbaugh himself, it's full of lies. I proceed to demolish it, point by point.
            His answer to all this? "Thanks for your point-by-point deflation of Frankenlies. I knew they were wing-nuts anyway. The same is true of FAIR's war with Limbaugh... Yes, FAIR scores many good points against Limbaugh, but the whole thing between them is a battle of equals." (Sigh)
           
  • Would it be rubbing it in to observe, at the end of it all, that he conducted an entire debate over bias in the media in an staggeringly biased, dishonest fashion?
           

Despite all this, as the weeks went by, I really tried to reach him. He was clearly trying so hard, and at times it seemed as if his mental mountain of lies, inconsistencies, and paradoxes would crash down around him at any moment. But, finally, I began to realize something fairly interesting: the person I was arguing with obviously wrong, and he probably knew it, but he absolutely refused to give up. The more he was caught out, the more insistent he became. There was no apparent conscience or guilt to put on the breaks.

I couldn't resist. Probably to his astonishment, I answered almost every single thing he posted, no matter how childish, shocking or repetitive. And believe me, after two weeks of this, it was a mountain of all three. There are some really excellent "Movement Conservative" debaters - truly scary bent intellectuals who could do such a skillful, Johnny Cochrane-esque job that some readers might actually be confused into believing their argument. AtariAmarok struggled painfully to measure up.

Here I have to confess to something of a weakness. I actually enjoy these kinds of people.

Most of them know when to quit, either out of guilt or embarrassment or a pragmatic sense that they may as well move on to easier marks. Most fundamentally, it's about knowing when the argument makes you (or your cause) look bad. But when you get someone, like AtariAmarok, who will endure almost any humiliation without giving up, this is a recipe for enormous fun.

As you might be able to imagine, someone who is forced to take positions based on emotional impulses and team spirit, and who simultaneously never admits they are wrong, can be led down a chain of their mistakes until they are literally insisting that the sky is not blue. So I took AtariAmarok all the way around that bend a few times and back again.

This clearly enraged him, and of course, it drove him to greater and greater absurdity as he steadfastly refused to give up. (Heh, heh)

Only, it's not true that he never gave up. He did fail eventually. Finally, weeks later, the story was archived. I can only imagine his seething, insensate rage as he discovered, through the coincidence of some Perl cron job somewhere inside the Slashdot server, that the last round of responses entered into our discussion were mine. It was not exactly clear what kind of internal beliefs Atari was operating on at this point, but it seems sure getting the last word in was a very important one.

Sure enough, he followed me off-topic into another thread, crashing into a discussion about independent video game developers to continue his argument on Social Security. I am not ashamed to say I indulged him further, and we had a few more rounds, this time at a practically leisurely pace. But, finally, after a few more days of this, he disappeared.

It was only later, when he was marked as a foe by the political troll user, that he developed new determination and dispensed with the formalities. I was threatening his worldview, and I had to be stopped. The emotional worlds of online forums and politics had collided. He had been frightened to the extent that a "jihad" was required.

After reading all this, you can see why I thought political troll optout was such a neat idea, and though I was not the first to join up, I was one of the first. How could I resist. I can't suppress my satisfaction at finding, guess who, AtariAmarok, with his familiar words, immortalized in that journal.

It was hardly a surprise that someone noticed him: the sheer stunning size of our creation weighed down the page like a 200 pound tumor. It was impossible to use your scroll bar and miss this thing. It is huge. His last-worder tit-for-tat, and my obvious appreciation for it, was by now dozens of layers deep across a seemingly endless series of threads. He made such a spectacle of himself that anyone who read that article couldn't help but see it. At that point, being made the foe of a user named "PoliticalTrollOptout" shouldn't come as a shock to anyone.

It certainly didn't shock AtariAmarok. It was as if being called a political troll in someone's journal had freed him from having to pretend he was not, unleashing a frenzy of previously repressed impulses. "Concern is a faggot" was born.

Although I was very pleased with all this, after I had a read through that political troll user's long manifesto, I was... also a bit concerned... myself. I realized that I was not the model of the perfect discussion partner. AtariAmarok's behavior was off the map, and while it's difficult to decide how to react to people like this, my way was not the best way. Who knew whether these were calculated, politically-motivated maneuvers, or the truly involuntary ravings of someone who genuinely needed help? I made my guess, and responded with plenty of healthy scorn. And there it was in black and white: whether or not he deserved it, it wasn't right. I had been indulging myself and having fun, but this was serious. I should have been more respectful. The worse he was, the more he needed it. If he was doing all this on purpose, I wasn't going to convince him of anything. And if he really was genuinely capable of the subhuman intelligence displayed in his posts, he needed my help, not my spite.

I made a new sig, and at the same time I resolved to improve. Questions, not judgments, and so forth.

It surprised me that AtariAmarok became convinced that I was the opt out user. I suppose it shouldn't have - we often imagine everyone has the same vices we do. As I looked through different threads of his trolling other users, I found out that it wasn't even the only person he'd accused of being me. Aside from being flattering, it's very funny. Maybe it makes him feel better, somehow.

As a stubborn child arguing over politics, I really enjoyed him, but as a bigoted stalker, I figured it was time to give AA his walking papers. I filtered him. What a nicer place this seemed the second I did it. He's someone else's problem now, though the good news is, he's an optional one. As for the "Social Security" story, if you look, you can see that Slashdot "got it;" the Conservative campaign to shape the story failed here, even if it succeeded on television, which was the moral of my post. Speaking of my post, it finally settled at a score of "3" (after a few suspiciously late moderations), but my responses did better, and I graduated to "excellent" Karma by the end of the whole project.

What do you know, a happy ending. :)