After writing and taking down a couple posts that were too hastily written and confusing, I am still kind of bowled over by the common issue emanating from many of them the past few days and weeks -- why in this administration have we seen such a collision of issues emerge concerning truth, lies, the relationship between an administration and the press, the uses of information, the spinning of information, the compromise of access, rhetoric and reality ... This administration has been uniquely inclined to treat everything as fair game, to spin a terrible terrorist attack against this country into a kind of marketing campaign for a Hollywood story about a president's leadership abilities and an administration's unparalleled right to evade normal Congressional oversight and to savage critics as traitors, to treat even national defense information as raw fungible material for propaganda purposes, for marketing the war and then spinning the post-war and then SwiftBoating critics. The press to varying degrees has tried to maneuver to get at the story through all the various and imperfect ways journalists know how, the front door and the back door, the podium story and the back story, and the triangulated story. There's a kind of agony play at hand now, and I think it demonstrates among other things how very much this administration was willing to manipulate the truth, the press, and ultimately the American public in some sort of never ending campaign that flickered at its most extreme and excessive into the orbit of something I can only describe somewhat ridiculously as fascism. The threat appears to have receded, but the sense one is left with, of a great democracy that is far more vulnerable than many had realized, is one of shock and tragedy, as well as relief that the worst may be over for now.

Posted by Laura at November 16, 2005 05:02 PM