Give Death Meaning

I touched on a subtle method the media uses to sway public opinion in “a bit fruitless”, the coverage of the mother of a KIA solider that is camped out at the Bush ranch wanting to see him shows how the media gets on message and stays on message. By picking the stories that get the news, they get to give the country the impression they want, and as evidenced in our local paper the other night, this then allows the local Opinion Editors to pick up the strain and press it further.

First of all, there is ALWAYS some protester type around a President of either party wherever they go. During the last couple years of the Clinton Presidency there would almost always be one or more young women that would dress up in berets like the one Monica Lewinsky wore in one picture or a set with knee pads on in the front row. The mainline media almost always ignored them, and one needed to get on a “Drudge” or other source that was willing to report it in order to be aware of it. 

There are always “the insane” on any issue from insanity to space aliens to saving the one toed newt.

There are few sadder things in the world than a mother that has lost a child, but a mother that has lost a child in the service of our country that has to ask “why” is one. Last fall a 17yr old Eagle Scout fell off a bluff up by Red Wing and died, we contributed to a memorial project that will be done for him. In the past week or so, one young man of 21 was killed in a motorcycle accident in the area, and another 17 year old was killed when his car drifted over the center line and was struck by a semi. If one has faith in God in those cases, we trust him to have a reason, for those that have no faith, this is a random world, and death is just part of the random process. Meaningless.

I’m often struck by the difference between the way a conservatives and liberals generally look at some kinds of death. First, 9-11. I’ve heard multiple liberals utter some version of “Only 3K people died on 9-11, yet over 40K die on our highways every year, and nobody is going to war over that”. Somehow they equate a willful act of terrorism with an accidental result of a transportation system, and at some point I’ll blog on that. While conservatives tend to not say it, I believe because it is completely obvious, a death in service of our country is considered to be hugely more meaningful and easy to understand than a death on a highway, from a fall, or a host of other reasons that we hear of all the time which befall people at young ages and other.

The point of the media though is that they WANT the deaths of servicemen to be seen as “meaningless”. Dying on a road when your “mission” was to get some milk and it was a “failure” since you didn’t get the milk home is easy for a liberal to understand. It is meaningless, the way that life and death should be to a liberal. Volunteering to serve your country, removing a man that murdered 10’s of K from torture, started two regional wars, used poison gas on his own people from power, and taking part in a giant effort to form the first stable democracy in the middle east, that is very hard for a liberal to understand, since it seems to give “hints” of higher purpose.

This is an area that it is hard for me to plumb the depths of the liberal psyche, but I believe the answer lies in the importance of meaningless to a liberal. If there WAS anything such as “shared meaning”, or “higher purpose”, it could mean that many of their assumptions for life were flawed. The phrase “God and Country”, often used in concert with the idea of a solider going to battle comes to mind. If people really do believe that some beliefs, some thoughts, some ways of living are “better than others”, than there might be some legitimate reasons to go to war. To protect our way of life from random terrorism to the extent possible, to save others from tyranny, to stop genocide, to provide the chance to others for freedom, these might all be causes worth giving your life for, or taking another life for.

The battle of the liberal is often a battle against meaning, so it becomes especially strong when the issue of “what is worth fighting and dying for” comes in. To the liberal, that is easy, to coin a phrase from a 60’s anti-war anthem; “Absolutely Nuthin”. There are no values or thoughts that exceed the value of a meaningless life. Suicide, abortion, or euthanasia are all “freedoms” that the liberal seeks to maximize, because since life lacks higher purpose, it is “enjoyment” that gives it “dignity”, and war not only can shorten the party, it isn’t enjoyable. 

There is no “miracle of life” to protect and cherish, only a vast series of random actions that caused a meaningless consciousness to arise. The thought that one group of people would hold their random thoughts and values to somehow be so much “better” than another group that they would go to war is completely indecipherable to the liberal mind.

So they battle to reduce the deaths of all soldiers to meaningless. A mother’s cry that her son’s death is meaningless is magnified across the nation since it meets with the liberal’s view of the war, and the President is asked to “explain again”. Thus, the never ending battle between meaning and the abyss continues on as it has since Lucifer first fell from the heavens and God first called order from chaos.

A Bit Fruitless

This AM my daily perusal of CNN Web headlines turned up this one; “Dad: Marine Felt Mission ‘a bit Fruitless’”. 

Such a headline certainly lets one know what CNN thinks of the mission in Iraq. The power of the mainline press to shape public opinion remains large, and one of the reasons it remains large is that it is subtle enough for a lot of people to not even understand they are being manipulated. CNN can decide what family views they decide to put on headlines, but unless they make an explicit attempt to “poll all military families that have lost soldiers”, or some other likely equally heartless technique, it is unsurprising to see headlines like the above. 

The press and the left likes to point out that “talk radio”, “Karl Rove”, or other forces have “manipulated Americans”, which is of course true. We are surrounded by a LOT of forces that manipulate our opinions, some because they believe what they say, and some explicitly to manipulate for other purposes. 

In the world of ideas, “buyer beware”, and “comparison shopping” is far more critical than even the consumer world. It is no surprise that the media dislikes any competition in the realm of ideas.

What would the ratio of headlines like the following be to those like the above if a “fair method” was used?; “He was doing what he wanted and believed we had to protect freedom”, “He cared about the Iraqi people, and wanted to do whatever he could to give them a chance at freedom”, or “eHe believed in the mission and what he was doing, he knew the risks” . 

There is very little way we can know, although most of us that pay attention to local news, and some non-headline stories at the national level have seen sentiments like those I manufactured. That is somewhat unsurprising since we have a volunteer military force that at least in some cases likely had reasons for going into the military that might even come close to the honorable reasons all journalists have for going into their profession ... admittedly the highest calling of mankind, worthy of special honor and much constitutional protection if the papers are to be believed!

We all have biases, but the mainline media never admits to their biases, while the conservative media does. Fox is a new odd case … an outlet that attempts to show both sides, often in an explicit point-counterpoint format, but they make an attempt. The fact that NY Times, NBC, CBS, etc consider Fox biased for even providing a conservative perspective gives a pretty good indication of the level of their own bias. They find it an affront that somebody out there is willing to present a conservative view in anything other than a purely negative light.

For the “general public” though, it is the more subtle bias as in the headline of this news article that has the greatest effect. The constant “little stories” in which the bias is in what is selected to be reported vs what is not selected, and in what is the headline vs what is buried at the end of the piece. Day in and day out, the views of the reporters … that Iraq is hopeless, that the economy is bad, that the administration is corrupt, that the country is being run by the religious right, that things are “generally bad”, becomes the “common view” for those that are not selective in the ideas that constantly bombard their minds.

Don’t believe anything that you read at face value, even this blog. At BEST, it is someone doing their utmost to find the truth by looking at reality with all the honesty and capability they have. Since it is just one foolish human doing that, multiple sources are REQUIRED.

Hundred to Zip, Iraq, North Korea

The Senate gave final passage yesterday to an $82 billion funding the war in Iraq. Spending this amount will push the cost of the war past $200 billion. Among the Senators voting FOR the bill were Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. Politics is of course a very strange sport, but this seems to require a little thought.

Kerry is easier to understand. It was pretty clear that he voted against the bill in ’04 because he wanted to improve his support on the left in case he needed it in the primaries. He famously wanted to be as firmly on both sides of the issue as he could so actually uttered on tape “Well actually I voted FOR the $87 Billion before I voted against it”. It is true that Bill Clinton was able to get elected after “I Didn’t Inhale”, but given the post 9-11 world, such a solid example of “Senator straddle” in action was probably the biggest single thing he did to hurt his election hopes.

He voted against before to shore up the left, he voted for it this time to be consistent (with himself). He has been on both sides of every issue during his entire Senate career, so this was just one more book-end. He voted against the first Gulf war, but he voted for this one … he just voted against funding it. Now he has voted FOR funding it (this time). He is absolutely consistently on both sides of every issue. What could be simpler to understand?

Kennedy on the other hand has gone out of his way to say any horrible thing he can dream up about the war, one would never suspect that he would vote for an appropriation for it, and enjoy having the chance to say more bad things about Bush. The only thought that crosses the mind is … he is up for re-election in 2006! It seems like that would be paranoid reasoning, but 60 or so years of alcoholism, womanizing, and drowning your secretary might make one paranoid after awhile. We have known of his insanity for a long time, paranoia becomes him.

We can be certain that voting for the money to fight the war won’t change the rhetoric, nor will anyone in the media point out that it seems odd to be completely against something, yet vote to fund it. They will blather on forever if the reasons for going in were good enough.

If N Korea were to nuke, say Tokyo, and threaten to nuke Los Angeles, Bush should come on TV with the following basic speech …

After consulting with my advisors, we see that there is no PROOF that N Korea is a threat to the United States. We studied our mistakes in Iraq, and realize that we were led down the wrong path by Saddam’s USE of chemical weapons as being an indicator of his HAVING chemical weapons. When the Russian Intelligence provided us with information that he was planning to attack US targets by “all means possible”, we believed he may use terrorist sources, or his own security forces to attack the US with chemical weapons. We have seen the error of our ways. He was “all out”.

There is NO PROOF that N Korea has more than a single weapon, and until we have that proof, we simply can’t risk any action. Since the LA Times has been very instrumental in pointing out the error of our ways, we know this decision will meet with their complete approval. Even if N Korea does have a weapon, maybe they don’t have a long enough range missile, or maybe their targeting isn’t as good as it could be. Remember; always look on the bright side … EXCEPT, if you happen to see something VERY bright, take a look at your hands. If you see the bones, please make an exception and just hit the deck without looking. None of us like to be wrong, but we know that we all can be.

We made a horrible mistake in Iraq, we thought that using chemical weapons meant that they existed, and that threatening to attack the US by “any means” meant “any means”. Silly us, we blundered in, deposed great leader that had brought a lot of extreme order to the country, and now it is on a road where it could end up with a liberal press.

It has been said that the Bush Administration doesn’t learn from its mistakes, but that is not true. If it turns out that N Korea is able to take out LA, and some other suitable number of cities, and the polls turn in favor of doing something stronger than sending in Jimmy Carter and asking them to be nice, we will reconsider.

I’m thinking that I’d make a GREAT Presidential speechwriter.