"That level of hate seems to short-out the logic circuits and
reroute the "thinking process" to an area controlled by
desired outcome instead of one which weighs facts carefully....
...Maybe all should back away, put down our 'smoking guns'
and try to deal with facts instead of political fantasy and
conspiracy based on twisted polemics and hearsay 'evidence'."
Hitchens, the Downing Street Memo and Leftist fantasy
Posted by: McQ
The QandO Blog
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Christopher Hitchens manages to distil the nonsense surrounding the so-called Downing Street memo in three relatively short paragraphs:
<<<
I am not one of those who uses the term "conspiracy theory" as an automatic sneer of dismissal. Conspiracies do occur. I spent a lot of my life at one point trying to show that William Casey of the Reagan-era CIA had made a private deal with the Iranian hostage-takers in 1979, inducing them to keep their prisoners until the Carter administration had been defeated, and I still firmly believe that something of the sort (which eventually culminated in the Iran-Contra underworld) was at least attempted. So do many senior members of both parties in Washington, with whom I am still in touch.
But the main Downing Street document does not introduce us to any hidden or arcane or occult knowledge. As Fred Kaplan wrote in Slate last week, it explains no mystery. As protagonist Jim Dixon observes in another context in Lucky Jim, it is remarkable for "its niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems." On a visit to Washington in the prelude to the Iraq war, some senior British officials formed the strong and correct impression that the Bush administration was bent upon an intervention. Their junior note-taker committed the literary and political solecism of saying that intelligence findings and "facts" were being "fixed" around this policy.
Well, if that doesn't prove it, I don't know what does.
We apparently have an administration that can, on the word of a British clerk, "fix" not just findings but also "facts." Never mind for now that the English employ the word "fix" in a slightly different way—a better term might have been "organized."
>>>
The reason only the fringe in this country are excited about this is because most of those in the big middle have already figured out what Hitchens says here. Not only is this not a "smoking-gun", its not even a loaded gun. It's a third hand account of someone's opinion in which a term, 'fixed', must be willfully misused to give it any credence at all.
But as Dale pointed out, and before the right begins patting itself on the back for not falling for this sort of thing, it's very reminiscent of some of the Clinton era nonsense that was trotted out by the extreme right. On both ends of the spectrum, the hate was and is almost palpable.
That level of hate seems to short-out the logic circuits and reroute the "thinking process" to an area controlled by desired outcome instead of one which weighs facts carefully. Let's face it, the desire of the extreme left is they find something which would allow them to start impeachment proceedings against this president which would result in a humiliating demise for Bush ala Nixon leaving the White House for good. That is much the same dream the extreme right had for the 8 years of the Clinton era.
The Downing Street Memos are going nowhere. Why? Because they are, as Hitchens points out, essentially an innane, badly worded and third-hand opinion about a meeting by a junior clerk. It is the Da Vinci Code of the left. Those who choose to believe the memo constitutes "proof" of Bush perfidy find themselves in direct opposition to another memo recently released by Blair and the findings of numerous commissions and panels which have looked in depth at these sorts of accusations.
Charles Rangle can have all the faux hearings he wishes, but in the end, this is a non-event in terms of political reality. You've probably noticed John Kerry has backed away.
But like the list of those who had died during Clinton's presidency, this will remain a staple of those on the left who must continue to build the conspiracy theory necessary to sustain their hate of George Bush. Fair warning: just as this sort of shrill nonsense backfired on the extreme right in Clinton's day, it will do the same to the left now.
And another fair warning: those on the right who are touting Ed Klein's book on Hillary Clinton as "The exposé that may do to Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions what Unfit for Command did to John Kerry's" (yes, that was in an email I received) are treading the same path ... again.
Maybe all should back away, put down our 'smoking guns' and try to deal with facts instead of political fantasy and conspiracy based on twisted polemics and hearsay 'evidence'.
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