I had tentatively planned to deconstruct and debunk Ronald Dumsfeld's ludicrous attempt to paint opponents of the Shrubbery's failed policies in Iraq as terrorist "appeasers" in this space. But since I couldn't possibly do as good a job as Keith Olbermann did the other night on MSNBC, I'll content myself with quoting a few of the best bits of Olbermann's righteous smackdown:
The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.
Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis--and the sober contemplation--of every American.
For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.
Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.
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In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld's speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril--with a growing evil--powerful and remorseless.
That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld's, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the "secret information." It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld's -- questioning their intellect and their morality.
That government was England's, in the 1930's.
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The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.
Most relevant of all -- it "knew" that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.
That critic's name was Winston Churchill.
Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.
History -- and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England -- have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty -- and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.
Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.
Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.
His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.
It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.
Olbermann took as his peroration the words of Edward R. Murrow, from the 1954 broadcast in which Murrow first exposed Joseph McCarthy as a sanctimonious fraud. And closed the broadcast with Murrow's famous sign-off phrase, "Good night and good luck." You can watch the whole thing at Crooks and Liars.
I've got goosebumps reading that transcript, and I can't find a single fault with Olbermann's historical analysis. Rumsfeld and the rest of the Shrubbery are operating on the premise, sadly correct, that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing--and what most people know about the events that preceded the outbreak of the Second World War could accurately be categorized as "a little knowledge." They know that Hitler was not opposed until he invaded Poland in the autumn of 1939. They know that the government of Sir Neville Chamberlain famously attempted to negotiate with Hitler to preserve the peace in Europe. And that's about as far as their knowledge goes.
Unfortunately, that leaves the field clear for people like Rumsfeld to twist the facts and reinterpret them for their target audience, secure in the knowledge that there are few outside the ranks of academic historians who can call their bluff. Unfortunately for the Shrubbery and fortunately for the rest of us, Keith Olbermann stepped up to the plate, kept his eye on the ball, and hit it right out of the park.
The best indication of just how devastating Olbermann's critique was is the fact that the wingnut fringe have already started trying to discredit him and his analysis of the historical situation. There may be a letter-writing campaign getting under way, in the hopes that if enough of the wingnuts write in, MSNBC will drop Olbermann's program.
Watch the video and/or read the transcript, and if you're so inclined, drop the folks at MSNBC (including Mr. Olbermann) a line and tell them what you thought. Here are a few e-mail contacts:
- viewerservices@msnbc.com
- letters@msnbc.com
- countdown@msnbc.com
- KOlbermann@msnbc.com
- dabrams@msnbc.com
It is maddening the amount of "historical" misinformation and outright lies these people resort to in their efforts to make black/white and up/down.
What does it take before people figure out that if the Shrubbery et al. are saying it, it is wrong, distorted, or a lie.
Posted by: Bryan | Thursday, 31 August 2006 at 23:55