Obedience

This video documents the Milgram Experiment. Though many have said that this experiment demonstrates an innate sadism in human nature it is clear that what it actually shows is something quite different and possibly even more horrifying.

The point to note is that human beings have a tendency towards obedience to authority. Notice that this does not imply a tendency towards an unquestioning obedience.

If it is true that people, in general, tend to question authority isn't this a good sign? Watch.

State Sanctioned Violence

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."--Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1785

The Innocence Project

"There is one argument against capital punishment, even in extreme cases, which I cannot deny to have weight--on which my hon. Friend justly laid great stress, and which never can be entirely got rid of. It is this--that if by an error of justice an innocent person is put to death, the mistake can never be corrected; all compensation, all reparation for the wrong is impossible. This would be indeed a serious objection if these miserable mistakes--among the most tragical occurrences in the whole round of human affairs--could not be made extremely rare."--John Stuart Mill, Speech in Favor of Capital Punishment

Curtis McCarty
Nicholas Yarris
Frank Lee Smith
Earl Washington
Dennis Williams
Ryan Matthews
Ray Krone
Verneal Jimerson
Verneal's case is particularly disturbing which will become evident to you if you read the
summary of his case. His conviction was based on an eye-witness who later recanted her
testimony. She was charged as an accomplice and with perjury and was jailed. Her release was contingent on her "recalling" her original testimony, which she did.

DNA testing excluded Verneal and the real perpetrators have been found.
Rolando Cruz
Ron Williamson
Robert Miller
Ronald Jones
Paul House

None of these men, falsely convicted and placed on death row, were discovered by "the system." If it were not for the pro-active intervention of the Innocence Project these men most likely would have been killed or would still be facing an unjust death.

Jennifer Bishop Jones of the Murder Victim's Families for Reconciliation is interviewed in this radio/call-in show.

Propaganda

As has now been well established (see the post below) the entire Jessica Lynch story was a mass media fabrication intended to bolster support for "our troops."

The original "public relations" or (better yet?) "perception management" article from The Washington Post can be found here.

These things don't happen by accident. One of the original theorists behind mass media manufacture of consent was Walter Lippmann. Here is a snippet of his thinking:

"That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the processes are plain enough.

The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technic, because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power." --Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

Reality

Propaganda II

After Jessica Lynch came the case of Pat Tillman the "poster boy" for Bush's Global War on Terror. It couldn't have been scripted better--professional football star chooses country over fame and fortune. Unfortunately, his squad is ambushed while he valiantly fights back and attempts to save his men. For his heroism he is awarded the Silver Star.

Here is one of the first media accounts.

And for what it is worth, here is what Ann Coulter had to say:

"American hero Pat Tillman won a Silver Star this year. But unlike Kerry, he did not write his own recommendation or live to throw his medals over the White House fence in an anti-war rally.

Tillman was an American original: virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be. The stunningly handsome athlete walked away from a three-year, $3.6 million NFL contract with the Arizona Cardinals to join the U.S. military and fight in Afghanistan, where he was killed in April.

He wanted no publicity and granted no interviews about his decision to leave pro football in the prime of his career and join the Army Rangers. (Most perplexing to Democrats, he didn't even take a home movie camera to a war zone in order to create fake footage for future political campaigns in which he would constantly palaver about his military service and drag around his "Band of Brothers" for the media.)

Tillman gave only an indirect explanation for his decision on the day after 9-11, when he said: "My great grandfather was at Pearl Harbor, and a lot of my family has gone and fought in wars, and I really haven't done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that." He said he wanted to "pay something back" to America.

He died bringing freedom and democracy to 28 million Afghans – pretty much confirming Michael Moore's view of America as an imperialist cowboy predator. There is not another country in the world – certainly not in continental Europe – that could have produced a Pat Tillman.

On the anniversary of D-Day, as Americans like Pat Tillman risked their lives to liberate 50 million Iraqis and Afghans, in a year when Americans poured into theaters to see a movie about Christ and reaffirmed their support for moral values at the polling booth, America's greatest president died. Ronald Reagan appealed to what is best about America and so transformed the nation that we are now safe to carry on without him."

Reality II

This story quickly unraveled as the family was quick to detect holes in the government story. Soon it became evident that Tillman had been the victim of "friendly fire" though the details were murky at best.

It also was becoming increasingly clear that Tillman was against the war in Iraq and was quite vocal about his views. He had also scheduled an interview with Noam Chomsky after his return from Afghanistan.

This, of course, if true, would make Coulter and her ilk eat their words. But it is easier to engage in the following kind of "reasoning":



Recently new information has been released that is even more chilling. Apparently, according to the doctors who performed Tillman's autopsy he was shot with a three round burst to the forehead from about thirty feet away. This raises the possibility that Tillman was not killed accidentally by friendly fire but that he was assassinated.

Paralogic

When political systems become increasingly detached from reality they loose the ability to rationally argue for their positions. Instead they appeal to force and engage in faulty reasoning in patterns that have been recognized and defined since Ancient Greece. The lack of coherent thinking also often results in certain kinds of psychological phenomena such as rather self-evident displays of self-deception, willful ignorance and cognitive dissonance. In the next few posts we will be weaving the sciences of political ponerology, logic and psychology to detect and analyze "paralogic" or a form of discourse that simulates rational argumentation to some degree or another but in fact represents a kind of degradation in the ability to think clearly.

Bounding the Debate: Elementary Mind Control

Here Chomsky lays out the concept of "bounding" debate and how this provides the illusion of controversy and dialogue.

Bounding the Debate: Elementary Mind Control II

Quotation:

"Even if it were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Who knows? And who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy? If there was some reason to believe that there was a high level conspiracy, it might be interesting. But the evidence against that is just overwhelming. And after that, if it happened to be a jealous husband, or the mafia, or someone else, what difference does it make? It's just taking energy away from serious issues onto ones that don't matter."