Submitted by Judith Siers-Poisson on
Jon Gingerich wrote a lengthy and insightful review of Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's recently released book, "The Best War Ever" for odwyerpr.com, the on-line companion to O'Dwyer's PR Report Monthly Magazine. Gingerich's piece begins: "Much like beauty, victory is in the eye of the beholder. This case is made clear in 'The Best War Ever,' a scathing analysis of the Bush Administration's misinformation campaign leading up to and during the war in Iraq." He goes on to highlight the thorough research presented in the book on topics like the role of the Iraqi National Congress and its disgraced leader Ahmed Chalabi in the build-up to war, Bush administration spending on PR and propaganda to sell the war and occupation to both Iraqis and Americans, and the role of the media in not bringing the deceptions and distortions to light. Reviews and a selection of interviews in other publications can be seen here. A reader in Holland, MI just sent us a note saying "Great book -- WOW -- an eye-opener!" There are also comments on the Amazon.com page for the book -- we hope that when you read "The Best War Ever" you will add a comment of your own!
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jupiter replied on Permalink
I've just started reading it
I've just started reading it so maybe I'm "jumping the gun" to post a comment. But I can't get "Source Watch" to come up right now, and this does fit in here in a way, being that commercialism is a major root of these sorts of social problems today.
Though we might never guess that(commercialism being a root problem), being that spin is so effective. (For instance an ad might state "trade your dentures for teeth" to keep up the positive attitude --- when actually dentures usually mean trading teeth for dentures. Also skimmed over are any other kinds of drawbacks that might accompany the different forms of false teeth, which maybe are better than no teeth. But why is their no focus on how to protect and maintain teeth in the first place, such as avoiding too much sugar?)
Anyway the "trendy" filthy attitudes out and about (PROMOTING EXTREME-ISM in thinking, instead of moderation) are amazing --- so commercialistic and they all stink.
For instance I saw a youth recently with a tee-shirt that said something like 'Winners always give their all' --- I might be paraphrasing as I don't recall the words exactly, but that was the definite jist.
(Okay now to the original point of this post):
And it reminded me of the EXTREME-ISM that is being promoted in our society.
Okay it is true that quite often to "win" in life, one must "give their all."
But this is NOT ALWAYS THE CASE, and sometimes this just means things like burn-out, or sacrificing or sabataging one area of life for another (eg. thinking) --- or for instance raising the kids properly, or leaving them to the dog for a babysitter, etc., or any other thing like that --- where one area of life must be sacrificed or sabataged for the another.
This sort of "thinking" (that extreme-ism" is always the pat answer) does not address the issue of developing life priorities, and young people often have not developed much of any life priorities. It is as if a young inexperienced person can or should "have it all" --- and it is ridiculous to assume this. (Incidentally, young naive inexperienced people being put in big positions of authority was also a characteristic of The Third Reich in Nazi Germany.) Gullible people are easier to fool, and therefore have certain convenience to certain people.
Life around us seems to be full of young (or youngish) people who have not lived long enough to catch on to the fact that they cannot superimpose the ideals of how they have grown up to think things are supposed to be (or should be) onto actual life. (Dreams are nice, but often they can be quite skewed, or incomplete.)
For instance some of them (the young) think that if they are "good" or are of a certain political party, they therefore deserve to be "rich." (They are too young to even be able to define "rich" really.) Then they find hard workers who have actually worked hard and attained a little bit of "wealth" (even if not much), and while they want to stand on their shoulders, they do not appreciate them.
Instead they want to do a sort of "wealth" act (to others and for show), and superimpose their ideal that they learned somewhere in life, that God himself has "blessed" them, or that they are "wealthy" because of their attitude or political stance, etc. (This has nothing to do with whether a theif comes in to plunder spoils, etc. There is, unfortunately, such a thing as thievery in life.)
Okay I am getting off the subject again because what I started to say was that it is pathetic yet interesting to observe how youths are being used to bandy about commercialistic propaganda on things like tee-shirts, that imply that to "win" in life, one must be some kind of total unrelenting extreme-ist (give their "all,") instead of learn anything about personal autonomy or BALANCE (eg. a toddler learning to walk must also learn balance). It is like one does not have to think, but rather slavishly give their all (as the tee-shirt implied). Well someone is making a lot of money for society forfeiting their abilities and time to think for themselves, and defaulting to commercialistic tee-shirt "wisdom" instead.
Okay I wish I had time to write the above up better, but sorry I don't. The jist is just that this commercialist extreme-ist, "fast food" (if you will) tee-shirt wisdom (which is apparently all we have time for) is obnoxious and pathetic. Extreme-ism is not always the total be-all, end-all answer, and if we actually assume so, this is only to our own peril.
This might seem like it has nothing to do with the above book, but actually non-thinking extreme-ism, or letting others do one's own thinking, is what puts many of these crack-pot "puppets" into office, who end up effectively leading the rest of us around like so many dogs on a leash.
Of course there are two issues, however: one is "thinking" for one's own self, and the other is a general knowledge of the facts. And since compared to the earth, the perspective of one individual human is only something like a virus, it is not easy to always have a grasp of all the relevant facts. So we just let them be spoon-fed to us.
Okay I've gotta go -- have many other things to do today.
P.S. I do not mean to totally disparage the young. Their fresh ideas are often very helpful and often they are not jaded, etc. They have good and valuable characteristics. But neither should they be made kings, and the idea that they know it all is ludicrous.