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I'm in the middle of a fascinating book set in the near future titled The Shell Game by Steve Alten. While the main characters in the book are fictional, the political backdrop of Peak Oil and false flag terrorist operations provides a setting where fictional politicians interact with real politicians. In this setting, the 2008 general election was won by a fictional Republican, though his last name, McKuin, sounds oddly familiar. The following exchange on page 133-134 is between Ace Futrell, a petroleum engineer and Jennifer Wienner, a former GOP political strategist, regarding the upcoming 2012 primaries:
(Ace Futrell) "What if one of the candidates, say, this Senator Mulligan, based his campaign on a radical plan to replace fossil fuels. Before you say no, imagine an economy based on clean energy. No dependence on the Middle East, no more war on terror. Eliminate oil from the equation, and you eliminate 90 percent of the causes for them hating the West. Think about how many Americans have died in Iraq."
(Jennifer Wienner) "Doesn't matter."
"Of course it matters. The public hates the war."
Jennifer shrugs. "Okay, Ace, if that's true, how did McKuin, a Republican, get elected after eight years of Bush and Cheney? By your logic, the Dems should have swept the 2008 elections just like they did in 2006. Didn't happen. Know why? Money and the Republican Media Message Machine."
"What? Limbaugh and those cable news stations?"
"They're part of it, yes. You begin with the message, something you can sell. Doesn't matter if it's true. Then you spend a billion dollars in ads hammering it into the American psyche. There were two major democratic challengers in '08, Hillary and Obama. Rove and his merry men fueled their attacks against one another in the primaries like the Reagan administration fueled the Iranians against the Iraqis in the 1980s. Divide and conquer - a brilliant play - and the blood between the two camps grew so bad that there was no way the Dems could heal the rift. The machine creates the message, the money fuels the media, and the media pounds it home every day until your mind subconsciously associates message with candidate. It's the Pavlov dog syndrome: ring the same bell over and over, and the swing voters eventually salivate."
Ace shakes his head. "So substance means nothing."
"Correct. Perceived substance, however, means everything. Take the invasion. Rove's primary mantra, besides WMDs, was that Iraqi oil would pay for the entire cost of the war. Andrew Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, actually appeared on Nightline saying that invading Iraq would cost the American taxpayers a maximum of $1.7 billion. That same message and dollar amount was repeated, over and over, until even Congress believed it. Here we are, ten years later, and we just passed a trillion dollars in spending! Billions in cash were redirected to Sunni insurgent groups, Al-Qaeda among them. Who's accountable? Maintain power and the answer is no one. As long as you control the White House, even the worst indictments get washed clean through a presidential pardon."
This cautionary tale was published in 2007, but three months into this year we have yet to heed it's prescient warning. We've fallen into Rove's trap and my fear is that the personal nature of the attacks between the two camps will, as Alten describes, grow so bad that there will be no way to heal the rift. This has got to stop. It's easy for me to call out Obama and Clinton and insist that they and everyone else connected with their campaigns narrow their focus to the issues that separate them and how vast the disconnect between McCain and the will of the American people is, but reality is that I have no control over that. I do, however have control over myself.
So I would like to apologize now to anyone that I have directed snarky remarks or attacks of a personal nature during the course of this primary election process. From this point forward, I pledge to focus on the issues. If anyone in the future catches me deviating from this, call me out on my hypocrisy. My delusional hope is that others here at GDP will commit to this pledge, regardless of whether someone connected with their opponent engages in these Rovian tactics, and focus on attacking the real dividers, our real opponents.
And yes, after reading such a chilling dystopic vision of the future, I need a hug!
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