so all this talk about who did what and why has got me thinking about Jean Buabrillard's book 'simumucra and simulation'. the plamegate and its political-media web has exposed the idea, concept, of 'truth' in modern politics, though i think 'truth' in politics has always been a postmodern activity. the idea of 'refernt' is always problematic in todays media world. we give the media the benifit of the doubt that they are telling us the truth especially when its disseminated in a source of authority and 'legtimacy' that the New York Times supposedly has. the atricle in the new york times about pipes and saddam attempting to reconstitue and produce nuclear weapons that judy miller wrote is a great artifact, point of refernce, on modern dissimenation of information. When u deconstruct or question as to how the evidence that was being pushed by the administration, especialy in the plamegate affair and here were not talking merely about the joe wilson part but the article by judy miller about those all important tubes that cheney went on meet the press and referenced,plamegate has a whole web of intrigue going beyond joe wilson, as to the foundation of said evidence and what it was founed on u find how thin and flimsy so called eveidence is allowed to be before it is presented to the public as 'truth', 'reality'. the pipes that where supposedly used as evidence that sadam was trying to restart a nuclear program was questioned by the cia long before it was in the Times. those tubes were said to be too small for nuclrer use. the administration was told of this. yet cheney went on meet the press and used the times article as a reference of fact that sadam was trying to build nukes. he knowlingly lied. Why? because what average american is going to be able to find out that this evidence is questionable at best, and an out right lie in the context that the article put the tubes in, was an outright manipualtion of the evidence because the cia had already said that those tubes were to small to use n a nuclear capacity? u see modern politicians know that what they put out as facts usually isnt going to be questioned and if it is questioned, it can never be conclusively proven to be absolutely false because politices and media is an activiy of muddling perception and dazing the average person's notions of whose right and whose wrong. if someone says this democrat is wrong then there's always another person paid to be there to say that this democrat is right and thats allowed on coporate news programs. u have a right and left argument and the moderator never calls either side on their false claims. the muddling of truth is fostered and even praised as balanced. "never again will the 'real' have a chance to produce itself"(simulucra and simulation). so lets take the false claim of tubes as evidence of saddams seeking a nuclear arsenal. the tubes is a 'referent',it's a symbol of saddams intention to destroy us all in a mushroom cloud. the 'referent' in the end turned out to be false in the way cheney on 'meet the press' characterized it. the tube as refernt was part of the case of sadamm as growing threat which was the reason we should go to war with him. what puny facts american politics and policy is based on! so the evindence which we now know was manipulated, since we know it was cheney's office that gave the information to judith miller who then wrote an article in the times about it, and was false. what cheney, the administration, and miler did was an act of dissimulation, some would say it was an act of blatant lying. they passed the tubes off as a 'real' fact. "To dissimulate is to pretend to have what on does not have"(pg3). they had no evidence at all; all they had was a series of facts that they passed off in a false context in order to manipuate our tendency to beleive those in power, who we beleive have some semblance of legitamcy when they talk about truth, that is to say that what comes out of politicians' mouths concerning life and death matters is correct and corresponds to what they, the politicians, believe is true and in our, the nations, best interests. they played with the public's propensity to buy what politicians say when it comes to issues of foreign policy and war, a propensity that was intensified after 9-11. i mean what narcissistic macheavellian would lie to us and get our kids in the military killed merely for personal gain and blind economic and political profit. Well apparently dick cheney and halliburton and the bush administration. but why are we suprised? we all claim to think politicians are full of it. maybe its because we all still want to believe in something called 'truth'. and that truth is really disseminated in the media and politics. hahaha. the disimulators dont deal in truth. they deal in signs and symbols and referents. they pic a sign, say the tubes for instance, they will wrap a story around it, the story we will call 'truth'. when a politician or a group of them, say the republicans, want to say something to gain a political win on some point, they will pass this story, truth, out as a matter of fact. what the public doesnt understand at least the ones who arent schooled in semiotics or philosophy like politicians are, remeber all politicians are wealthy and attend prestiguois universtires or can hire people who have taken upper university classes to school them on sign, 'truth' manipulataion, so they know some things the average constituetn doesnt. take social securtiy as another example. remeber early 2005 when the president wanted to privatize it. then wanted to personlaize it. well privatize and personalize is the 'sign' along with social security as a 'sign'. Are we suppose to take as fact that bush wanted to help people on social security by privatizing it. rememder this is the same administration that used fuzzy facts as evidence that saddam was building a nuclear arsenal. we heard all these 'facts' that SS was going to go bankrupt in this year or that year no one cold say conclusivley what year cause remember its the coporate media's MO to muddle perception. so heres social security as a 'refernt' and around it was a doom 'story' about it going bankrupt and why it would go bankrupt, who it would affect and why, etc etc etc. now im not sure why he wanted to change social security, i have no priviledged relationship with truth no more than anyone else. one could say he wanted to give money to wall street, because some people would say that bush is a big business man. maybe he as a true conservative wanted to destroy SS because like most conservatives he sees SS as an entitlement 'and entitlements are bad'. the point is that we can no longer trust politicians and the media with the so called 'truth'. all they do is muddle it and manipulate it and pervert for political or coparate gain. we live in an age where 'truth is dead'. not that truth doesnt exist but that it is so far removed from what we recieve as truth thru the media that we no longer have access to it. this is the post modern idea of images. Buadrillard and others are right, there are only perspectives and manipulation of perspectives, thats what the whole plamegate web shows us so vividly. boy how we were duped so well. all we have now is a myth of truth. bush's is an admisnistration of myth.
