The Cassandra Blues

You know the deal with Cassandra, right? After Apollo raped her he gave her the gift of prophecy but also the curse that nobody would ever believe what she told them (which if I recall correctly would always be bad news)?

How many of us know how she feels now?

It is on the one hand encouraging to see people FINALLY figuring out this war was a bad idea...but it is TOO FUCKING LATE! We already started it! We don't get to call it off and declare a do-over! If Congress had friggin' LISTENED...

But of course that never happens, does it.

So I have two discussion questions for Hump Day:

1) What enabled us to see this mess coming when they, apparently, couldn't?

2) Why wouldn't anyone believe us?

@#$! DANGIT @#$@$!,

The Plaid Adder

Because we were not busy focusing on subverting democracy, attacking California for fun and profit, and taking Iraqi oil to screw our buddies the Saudis.

Some of us are also dreading the upcoming civil war/police state.

n/t

and I most definitely have felt that same anger. Sure, we've been vindicated but it is such a hollow victory.

In response, it depends on the "they" in your first question. I think people in the Bush administration knew the potential quagmire we were headed for but simply didn't care. They saw the oil and how much money could be made for their buddies in the defense industry and through private, no-bid contracts. They also saw it is an essential part of implementing their PNAC vision.

So what if some troops lost their lives and thousands of innocent Iraqi lives were lost or devastated. Their gains far outweighed the consequences of carrying out a plan that had been in the works for years.

For average citizens, I think it's a combination of relying on corporate media, which certainly played a major role in disseminating the Bush administration's propaganda, along with fear. I think that is why so many are willing to fall for the Iraq-AlQuaeda connection. They want to feel safe, and if we destroy Iraq, we'll protect ourselves -- even if it isn't true.

Another factor is that the misty-eyed vision of what America is and what it stands for is firmly implanted in people's minds and hasn't caught up to present-day reality. We are the good guys, saviors of the world. Who would want to relinquish that image of themselves. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they are unable to accept the fact that we were wrong in carrying out a unilateral, pre-emptive strike against Iraq.

I think that is another reason the war-mongers have grown increasingly shrill. I think the cognitive dissonance going on in their heads right now must be unbearable.

As for the second question, most of us here do not rely on mainstream media as our sole source of news, are intellectually curious and ready to question our own assumptions and beliefs, and we have created a think-tank environment in which people share their areas of expertise and the best ideas bubble to the top (a lot of the time, anyway).

I wish they would have listened. As with everyone here, I get no satisfaction from "I told you so" right now.

1. Not everyone found this place (or another like it). Those people were doomed to hear only the propaganda coming from the Bush Cabal through the RW media.

2. Many people are so (apathetic, lazy, stupid, busy living their lives, cynical: pick one) that they don't want to hear anything complicated and certainly don't have time to dig deeper than the occasional soundbite to find out what is really going on.

3. When we speak, we are a whisper in a screaming maelstrom of incessant RW propaganda. People tend to believe that which they hear the most and the loudest, even if it is transparently false.

4. As liberals and progressives, we are already predisposed with the tools that enable us to understand these things: intelligence, sensitivity, and empathy.

I know the feeling. You can talk until you are blue in the face, give your best well-reasoned arguments, and people keep looking at you like you're out of your mind.

I'm trying to sell a documentary on Peak Oil, and it's impossible.

How do you get anyone interested when they just dismiss you?

TV PROGRAMMER: "Oh, there's lots of oil left"

ME: Yes, but that's not the whole story. If you'd just read the informa....

TV PROGRAMMER: Next proposal. Ah, a documentary about transvestite jugglers. That I can understand in 5 seconds or less. Excellent!

"War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" by Chris Hedges. In it, he puts the words to a lot of the memes and the symbols that accompany war. I'm only a couple dozen pages in, and it's good stuff.

I don't know that it explains why nations are so ready to go to war, but it does lay out much of the groundwork that has to be done before a nation will get hot to trot for war, and reads like a road map (you should pardon the expression) for what the corrupt Bush administration did from rolling out its new product line in September 2002 through the actual launching of the invasion six or seven months later.

Im not convinced many of them didn't know also. The Media, many of them knew it to.
Why did they go along? The price of selling a soul? I don't know...

...that the majority still think we should have invaded. Didn't I read that something like 67% of the country STILL thinks we were right to start the war? Not meaning to splash cold water on the thread but we still have TONS of education to dispense. Yes, people are learning, most do not agree with the way it is being handled now and gee-duh bya's numbers are falling fast but there are many, many out there who think "well, fuck em, look at what they did to us on 9-11, nuke all them ayrabs."

The day of "I told ya so" has not yet arrived by a long shot, I think.

Ever since he was handed the job of part owner of the Texas Rangers and the camera would zoom in on him and some dipshit announcer would say what a fine governor he'd make.The fix has been in for Smirk for many years now, and now his handlers are getting their money's worth, in spades.

I've known and researched the many dirty and shady dealings in this guy's past, told them to whoever would listen, and then stand back and watch him take elections from the obviously superior and better qualified Ann Richards and Al Gore.

strikes a chord.

I even get a Cassandra complex on this board sometimes; I speak and no one pays attention. Sigh.....

"1) What enabled us to see this mess coming when they, apparently, couldn't?"
Because we already knew that * was talking out of his ass, so we didn't have to believe anything he said.

"2) Why wouldn't anyone believe us?"
Because they are Stepford people.