Old Myths From The Age of Idiocy (The One We're in Now)

Old Myths From the Age of Idiocy (The One We're in Now)
To be replaced by:
New Truths For The Age of Reality (One We Hope to Enter)

The Great Republican Disaster, from Reagan to Bush the Lesser, has been the Time of the Unreal. (Yes, people possessed by the unreal are very much like the undead. They're mindless, lethal, they infect others, they're very hard to stop, and their existence is a complete surprise to people who live in the real world.)
Those forces of darkness derive their power from their Great Myths.

No matter how powerful a myth is, if it is essentially false, reality has certain methods fighting back. It uses Failure, If failure fails, it moves on, through Fiasco, to Disaster.

Recently there have been signs of hope.
Yes. Hope means Obama. He speaks of reality, whether it's about race or a gas tax holiday.
Lo and behold, people actually have heard, listened, and agreed.

Let us seize the time and create New Truths, based on Reality, to replace the Old Myths based on Bullshit.

Old Myth: 9/11 was an Act of War
New Truth: 9/11 was a Criminal Act.
Osama bin Laden was not a head of state or an agent of a state. He was a religion crazed gangster with a relatively small gang. His acts were crimes.
To elevate them to acts of war was to elevate him.
Worse, it created the wrong response. So wrong that he's still out there. Proof that you can commit a mass murder against the United States and get away with it.
Only when we redefine it, will we be able to figure out a sane response to replace the current insanity.

Old Myth: The War On Terror
New Truth: The War on Terror is Bogus
There is no War on Terror. It was a PR ploy to invade a country that annoyed George Bush and Dick Cheney, to transfer mad amounts of money to the military-industrial complex, to win elections, and to allow George to play dress up.

Old Myth: The War in Iraq was Not a War of Choice.
New Truth: The War in Iraq was a War of Choice.
Even if someone actually believed that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous man with weapons of mass destruction, the problem was solved the moment that the weapons inspectors got full access to all sites in Iraq.
At that point, going to war was like the police going into a man's house to look for guns, then shooting him while he is sitting on the couch, because they couldn't find them and were tired of looking.

Old Myth: The War in Iraq Can be Won.
New Truth: The War in Iraq Was Lost Years Ago.
It was lost through belief in stupid mythologies and the failure to heed reality. It was lost through poor planning and worse execution.

The administration does not a plan, the means, or the will to win in Iraq. Their only plan, their only goal, is to pass the problem on, so they can blame the next president for their failure.

Old Myth: If we Leave Iraq, Chaos Will Ensue.
New Truth: Iraq is Now in Chaos.
George Bush, and his gang, created the chaos. They applied everything they believed in - force as foreign policy, that the whole world wants to be like us, free marketeering, no government, crony appointments - to Iraq. It demonstrates the bankruptcy of their entire theology.

Old Myth: Free Markets are the Best Solution to Everything.
New Truth: Markets are Good for Cheap Consumer Goods, but Bad for Health.
They're bad for individual health, for health care systems, for the health of our work force, for the health of the environment. Unchecked and unbalanced, they're bad for the health of our economy.

Old Myth: All Regulation is Bad. Remove Regulation and the Free Markets Will Make Everything Better.
New Truth: An Economy Without Regulations is like a Baseball Game Without Umpires.
The cheaters take over and chaos ensues.

Old Myth: Tax Cuts Stimulate the Economy
New Truth: The Wrong Tax Cuts Can Ruin the Economy.
The truth is that the American economy has often thrived with high tax rates. Since WWII, it has never done as badly as it has under Bush, with the most cuts and lowest rates.

Old Myth: Reagan won the Cold War.
New Truth: The hippies won the Cold War.
Reagan told Gobachov, "Tear down that wall." But Gorbachov didn't. Reagan built up the military, but that didn't change anything. The people who tore down the Berlin Wall did so because they wanted to wear jeans and listen to rock 'n' roll and say rude things about their government. Like the hippies.

Old Myth: The Media Lost the War in Vietnam
New Truth: (A restatement of an Old Truth). The War in Vietnam was a stupid, useless mistake.
Bad politics, bad military strategy, and bad tactics made it worse. America's leaders and America's generals lost the war in Vietnam.

There are recordings of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger privately admitting that the Vietnam War could not be won. Then deciding not to end it, to keep it going, so Nixon could win re-election.

This is important because after Bush leaves office someone else will have to get us out of Iraq. The myth makers will rush in to say that Bush policies could have won and his successor lost the war.

Old Myth: George Bush is the Problem.
New Truth: The entire Republican Agenda Has Been Revealed as Bankrupt
George Bush acted out an agenda. It was enthusiastically backed by a Republican congress. And acquiesced to by Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who were terrified by the Republican's Big Bad Myths.

Old Myth: Religious Faith is a Good Way to Judge a Leader
New Truth: The Way People Deal With Reality, Is the Way to Judge a Leader.
The spectacle of our candidates groveling on TV over how religious they are, is appalling.
"If there is one thing for which we stand in this country, it is for complete religious freedom, and it is an emphatic negation of this right to cross-examine a man on his religion before being willing to support him for office."
Theodore Roosevelt (Republican)

Old Myth: Being Intelligent is Elitist. And That's Bad
New Truth: Lord, oh Lord, We're Tired of Stupid Leaders Who Can't Do Anything Right.

Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org

His new novel: Salvation Boulevard will be published in September, 2008, by Nation Books.

Comments

[JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin]

Good post, Lawrence.

[muffler]

There is no such thing as an invisible hand to correct markets... it's advertising to allow some people to take advantage of the market without oversight. What the republicans did was eliminate the auditors and the controls so they could sell off America. This should be called the trust baby generation. For the first time in American history one generation spent the entire savings and growth of the previous generations because they wanted the money NOW. They made no investment in the future. Then they made up new theories to support their actions. Finally the mass of people are starting to see the illusion and maybe real American common sense and work ethic will return. A job well done is to be expected and the future is to be built upon by each generation. A job poorly done should be punished.

[luziannagirl]

How about:

"There Is No Such Thing As A Free Market" .

Or, maybe even catchier, " A Free Market Is Not Free ".

Somebody always pays the cost of reaping short-term gain at the expense of long-term interests. Somebody always pays the cost of favoring a few select individuals and corporations over the vast majority of citizens. Somebody always pays the cost of liquidation of the commons by those big and bold and craven enough to steal them from the people.

At the point that enough "somebody's" finally realize who is actually paying for the "Free Market", and how much it's costing us, perhaps we will return to democracy, if it's not too late by then.

[Henry]

I have thought for some time that the subprime mortgage securitization mess is proof positive that unregulated markets do not work. Free enterprise cannot be governed by an "invisible hand". There need to be rules for fair play and those rules need to be observed and regulated.
McCain and the "NoBrain" right wing need to be deluged, drenched with the failure of the market (re subprime for example) and they need to be forced to "confess" in public where the problem exists and what the correct solution happens to be. This very debate with the current empiracle evidence wipes out the thrust of Republicanism e.g. "government is the problem"

[layman]

No wonder there are lots of fake religious people in this country because there's lot ot money to be made by wearing religion on your sleeves.

Organized religions, fake and otherwise, make up the multi-billion dollar industry. And there are enough ignorant people to follow blindly.

Guess, fake politicians have done very well then; case in point, the current thief and thug administion.

[stevesrant]

Well said as usual Larry. Love you in Chronogram, only just discovered you were here. Permit me to add one Old Myth: Democrats are different than Republicans
and a New Hope: Obama will prove this to now be true.

[joanndarc]

Old Myth: Reagan won the Cold War.
New Truth: The hippies won the Cold War.
USSR political system crumbled first b/c it could not restructure itself due to it's rigidity. USSR economy was tightly wired to it's political system and had imploded.
People tend to overlook the impact of the Cold War on the USA, unfortunatelly. Or why do you think USA is so different from Europe?
Nobody won the cold war.

[ceu]

Well done, Larry.

[HeevenSteven]

Good stuff Larry!

[unitron]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who believes that the Cold War was won by The Beatles and blue jeans (all mad props to the Western powers that kept the USSR in check long enough for it to happen).

"The War in Iraq Was Lost Years Ago."

Yeah, about the time some drunk Brit drew some lines on a map and named it Iraq.
And then we were stupid enough to get involved.

[glaze]

Larry, this entry is going to be innundated with righteous howls of denial, claims of virulent spin gone wild, indignant cries for your scalp... GOOD FOR YOU!

[OttoMann]

Wow, great post. There are a lot of Old Myths, sadly.

Old Myth: Republicans/Conservatives have policies and agenda that benefit middle class Americans.
New Truth: Republicans/Conservatives are greedy money-grubbers who want government to help them get richer, and will say and do anything to get the rest of us to go along all of their schemes that ultimately only benefit them, and hurt the rest of us.