Lying To Protect Your Ego
One of the lesser evils that was spawned by the invasion of Iraq are the number of otherwise sane and intelligent people who refuse to simply acknowledge they screwed up when they supported the invasion and move on with their life.
This was a major problem for Hillary Clinton, but an even bigger problem in the media. Politics explains Mrs. Clinton decision, but nothing but ego explains the media.
Over at Hullabaloo Tristero looks at George Packer who is complaining about Obama’s Iraqi withdrawal plan.
Tristero is troubled by a Packer piece in the run up to the invasion that included this bit:
the war has forced on all of us F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous test of a first-rate intelligence: “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
Mr. Packer claims the status of a “first-rate intelligence” while failing to note that it is nothing more than a restatement of the dialectic. While most people associate it with the works of Hegel and Marx, the basic concept goes back to the beginnings of logic.
The problem for Mr. Parker is that the standard formulation of thesis + antithesis → synthesis, doesn’t work in the case of the Iraq invasion for the simple reason that the thesis was based on lies. A lot of people knew that the claims were lies, and reported on it, but they were ignored, and are still being ignored.
Why should anyone listen to a person who can’t admit error and was gulled by the “second-rate intelligence” of the neocons and the Hedgemony?
2 comments
I am reminded of a conversation with my thesis adviser when I was in music grad school:
Adviser: How’s your thesis?
Steve: Um, no progress. I’m afraid I’m sitting on my thesis.
Adviser: Hmm, that’s odd. Most people sit on their arsis.
We are stuck in a war because people cannot admit they were ever wrong? Oh, great. Shades of Viet… um, we’re not supposed to say that, are we?
How can you win a war when the people in charge can’t even identify the enemy?