In response to this article by an active duty Marine in the Washington Post:
The Truth On the GroundBy Ben Connable
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A29
When I told people that I was getting ready to head back to Iraq for my third tour, the usual response was a frown, a somber head shake and even the occasional "I'm sorry." When I told them that I was glad to be going back, the response was awkward disbelief, a fake smile and a change of subject. The common wisdom seems to be that Iraq is an unwinnable war and a quagmire and that the only thing left to decide is how quickly we withdraw. Depending on which poll you believe, about 60 percent of Americans think it's time to pull out of Iraq.
How is it, then, that 64 percent of U.S. military officers think we will succeed if we are allowed to continue our work? Why is there such a dramatic divergence between American public opinion and the upbeat assessment of the men and women doing the fighting?
The whole thing can (and should) be read here.
And this article by the UCLA Professor who found that there *is* bias in the news (and how many jaws dropped to find Fox News listed as being a little lefty?):
Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political ScientistDate: December 14, 2005
Contact: [see original article]While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.
You can (and should) read the rest of that here.
Comes this bit of analysis from an intel listserv I belong to:
Great article! The principal problem that we face however is that one of our two major parties is now heavily invested in our defeat, and if possible, humiliation; and this investment in defeat and humiliation extends to our news media, 80% of which is composed of self-identified members of that party (as opposed to 2% that self-identify with the other party)*. This investment did not occur by chance; it was inevitable and predictable (and was, in fact, predicted by me in writing, within a week of the terrorist attacks of September 2001).The principal dynamics driving this investment are of a two-fold nature. First, the party desiring and actively promoting national defeat and humiliation does so because when the US engages in war overseas, any war overseas, that party is at an inherent disadvantage politically. In order for it to be competitive at the national level, the country must be at peace (at least we must not be actively engaged in war with other countries; although they may be engaged in war against us). This is because since the 1930’s, this party has closely identified itself with domestic political causes, especially positioning itself as the champion of the self-perceived domestic disenfranchised and aggrieved (such as media personalities, academicians, civil servants (including public school teachers), union leaders, etc.). Additionally, since the 1960’s, this party has distanced itself from defense and intelligence matters, going so far as to position itself, by the mid-1970’s, as the enemy of our own defense and intelligence communities. Because of this, in times of war (notably the Cold War), national attention and concern is necessarily drawn to this party’s demonstrable weakness; only in times of peace does public attention tend to focus on domestic issues where this party is competitive. If peace overseas can be complemented by discord at home, that gives them more ready-made constituencies, and that much more opportunity to exploit politically. This party therefore thrives on domestic turbulence; but requires isolation from problems overseas. If such isolationism can be reinforced by the memory of perceived or actual military catastrophe (such as followed our surrender of Indo-China to Communism in the 1970’s), so much the better.
The second reason why this party needs our national defeat and humiliation is that the war that has been thrust upon us is correctly perceived as a creature of the other party (the one now in power). The reason that this perception is accurate is because only the other party would (or did) engage in a war for our national interests. Even though this war has been raging since the early 1990’s (some say the late 1970’s), only the other party recognized its existence and react accordingly. The party that needs our defeat and humiliation invariably fears our own power more than that of any enemy; and because of this, can be counted-upon to respond to any provocation with nothing stronger than symbolic gestures of disapproval, such as the dimming of the national Christmas Tree lights (although they are capable of fearlessly bombing targets at random, provided that the targets offer no provocation and have nothing to do with our national interests). Because this war is identified with the other party, its loss and our humiliation would necessarily also be identified with the other party. In this way, sabotaging the war can contribute to the other party being discredited, thereby enhancing the status and influence of the party desiring our national defeat and humiliation.
National interest and the lives and well being of those who would be influenced by such a debacle mean nothing to this party (witness their response to the millions murdered and tens of millions enslaved in Indo-China in the 1970’s). They are only concerned about their partisan political advantage; and they have every reason to believe that our defeat would garner for them such an advantage. Prior to 1972, the ideas embodied in the phrases “Politics stops at the water’s edge” and “Loyal Opposition” restrained such partisanship directed in pursuit of national and international tragedy; but that time has passed, I fear forever. I remain ...
Most Respectfully Yours,
Richard Maltz
* These figures are approximate, and vary over time; but they vary remarkably little. Similar numbers are reported in a large number of surveys of media political identification over the past forty or so years, most notably those conducted by the team of Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter.
I bloviate further in the Flash Traffic/Extended Entry.
I would add that other dynamics are at work, as well. I don't believe there is any true, behind-the-scenes conspiracy at work on the issue of bias, nor, really, in the context of the axes of advance followed by the Democrat Party. I do think, however, that our elites, now more than ever, live in bubbles, isolated from the rest of us and our daily concerns and beliefs. Self-reinforcing bubbles, where they only hear what they want to hear, and it's fed to them by their compatriots in the bubble - and that includes the press feeding the left. The Right in *not* immune, and in the time since the Republicans first gained power in taking control of Congress, then the White House, they, too, have been caught in the self-reinforcing bubble.
How else to explain the fact that the left-leaning punditocracy and Democrat party have been stunned election cycle after election cycle from what their expectations and polling lead them to believe is going to happen? The whole process (on both sides) is so wrapped up in itself, that most of us ignore it - because we're pretty sure they aren't going to listen to contrarian voices.
Update: Got rushed this morning, and left this out.
When you are attracted to do something, you tend to immerse yourself in it, as I have done with the military. That immediately shortens your horizons, no matter how expansive you think they are. My sister grew up in the same house I did - but she married a music teacher, joined a nice respectable Episcopal church, and hung around with teachers in a college town. Not surprisingly, my sister's view of the world - even though we shared a world directly for 20 years, are now somewhat *different* from mine.
I was a cop briefly. One of the things I noticed there was for reasons practical and somewhat legal/self protecting, cops live in their own bubble-world. One where they deal with bad people all the time, good people on a day they made a bad decision, and good people who are having bad days (victims). This tends to color their view of humanity. One of the reasons my department actively encouraged officers to get off the beat and into community activities was to find ways to keep them exposed to regular people having regular days in a positive manner. I also found that fellow officers who came into the profession later had a wider perspective on people than did the ones for whom being a policeman was essentially their only real experience with people past school.
Emergency room doctors tend to see a dangerous world full of stupid or unlucky people - and tend to think that *is* the world.
So it is with the media. The nature of reporting is to report the high-value - generally bad - news. Accordingly, you tend to see the world in that light, and people who don't share that attitude, well, they're too stupid for words, can't they *see* what is right in front of them? No, they can't - because it isn't as widespread as your reporter generally believes, and most of us *don't* see it. News agency reporting of New Orleans is a case in point.
If you restrict your news gathering to one medium - especially television, where what, 5 or 6 24 hour news operations are vying for your attention? - what do you see? Every interesting murder, bank robbery, kidnapping, molested child, bombing, etc - although for most of us, we were never even near anything remotely like that... we start to see the world through that lens as well.
Bubbles.
Here at the Castle, on of our strengths is a relative diversity of opinion and a tolerance of same. Indicative of how the broader media culture at large works, however - leaving aside issues of quality and content (away, inconvenient details!) one of the reasons we aren't more popular among the people who live on the 'net, I believe, is *precisely* the fact that we generally eschew entertaining displays of spittle flecking the screen. Well, that and, as brushed off before, content and quality. It ain't what the consumers want.
At the same time - we *are* moderately large in context, and growing. But to immunize ourselves against hubris, we also have to remember that our non-voyeur visitor count is *still* less than my local small-town newspaper...
But we're cheaper.
But at work, oddly enough, both corporately and with the client, I have seen very concrete examples of how diversity - of opinion, thought, experience, and analysis, has contributed to better products, better decisions.
This isn't the faux diversity of mandated quota-mongering, but rather a deliberate effort to hire people "not like us" - in terms of hiring people other than just retired male combat arms officers, people other than retired/former military, people with no military background at all.
To truly be successful, there has to be some basis of shared understanding and core values, but there is much room for jockeying around in there. I freely admit when we were a buncha retired gunners and grunts it was a very convivial atmosphere and we did good work, but it's been a much *better* group since we started hiring people other than gunners, grunts, tankers and flyboys.
The same thing would benefit those arenas of society who make their living telling us how to live - yet demonstrably *not* walking the walk, however well they talk the talk. Just like I would *still* like to score a sailor as a regular poster around here.
What say you?
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