August 30, 2008

Private Truths Made Public: "New Orleans' Going to Hit Monday. Heh. God's on Our Side."

Eyes in the sky, and "redstateabsentee" is listening.

" Foul Don Fowler Amused by New Orleans Hurricane Former DNC Chairman Don Fowler laughs at New Orleans while talking to Congressman John Spratt (D) of SC. You can't hear Spratt but he chuckles along with."
It's not a surprise that Fowler and Spratt would join with the execrable Michael Moore in "thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in Heaven.'' This is the way these people think -- everything is reduced in a twinkling to whatever political advantage they can possibly squeeze out of it. It is not remarkable at all.

What is remarkable about this brief clip is that the Web now has ears and eyes everywhere. This casual conversation between allies reveling in their mutual cynicism is, within hours of being made with a sense of (false) security, laid bare to the world for approval or censure. It's a Brave New World with more than a soupcon of "1984" stirred in. It's a sword that cuts not just both ways, but in all directions at once. To extend the metaphor one more step: It is the sword of Damocles and it now hovers above us all by the most slender thread. Privacy? That's so 20th century, isn't it?


Our individual ability to communicate and expose, to prostelitize and to propagate, has now been amplified and extended until our most intimate and unguarded actions can have personal, national or global consequences.

In the Tom Clancy novel / Harrison Ford movie of 1992, Patriot Games, we caught an early glimpse of what the ability to monitor anything, anywhere at any time means.

In this scene, Ford (as Jack Ryan) has made a determination of where a group of terrorists he personally hates is hiding out in the Libyan desert. He's escorted to a basement room in CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. As they are passing into this hidden, guarded space Ryan has never seen before, the following dialogue takes place.

Jack Ryan: Where are you taking me, Marty?
Marty Cantor: It's you who have taken us, Jack...
[Large room with monitors and computers. Soft clacking of keyboards. Softer voices coming from speakers...]
Woman: Satellite now entering target area.
Marty Cantor: ...Into battle.
Woman: Enlargement Sector Four. Airborne Support approaching target area. E.T.A. Thirty five seconds.
CIA Agent: That is a kill.
That sort of scene seemed fanciful then. Good for a movie, but a little far-fetched for the real world in which most of us lived. Today, of course, men sit in guarded, secure rooms in Florida and launch Hellfire missiles from drones that incinerate cars in the deserts of Iraq. What was once fanciful has become commonplace, even banal.

In the same manner, people fly about on commercial airways with cell-phones or other small devices that can be concealed in the hand and record video of other people's conversations. Upon arrival these videos can, from within the terminal, be broadcast to the world. It is both miraculous and yet commonplace, even banal.

Long ago, in the Stone Age of the Internet, before even the Web was born, I was a member of an online community called The WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link.) One of the axioms shared by this primitive Facebookesque community was "Tools not rules." It was an element of the WELL faith that having the right tools online would make the need for rules redundant. The tools would shape the morality and the limits of the human society that used them; shape it for the common good.

"Tools not rules" was a quaint libertarian notion and a compelling one. It removed both God and Government from human affairs. I subscribed to it in the unthinking way of the times. In a certain sense I subscribe to it now, but not whole-heartedly. In fact it now seems to me to be rather glib and I have grown suspicious of glib things. They make doing both good and ill too easy to justify because they make it so easy to do one or the other or both at once.

Submitted for your approval, disapproval, or at least your analysis is the clip above. I found it easily since I have set up certain web tools that automatically alert me to the existence of such items. Watching it I felt it easily confirmed for me certain assumptions I hold about people whose political beliefs and goals are opposite to mine. And indeed there's nothing in the video that doesn't bear that out. The sheer candid nature of it -- two men talking under the assumption they could not possibly be overheard -- confirms that they indeed mean what they say.

Were either one to be placed in a more formal setting -- interviewer, camera, microphone -- and asked about the Hurricane threatening the Gulf Coast they would immediately begin to spout the standard stream of platitudes they know is expected of them in their political roles. We'd nod and then nod out. Move on. Nothing to hear here.

Here there is something to hear; something to overhear. Something that has the unmistakable whiff of truth about the actual thoughts of the men. It has that quality of Valerie Carr's 1958 bubble-gum ballad, "When the Boys Talk About the Girls:"
"Oh, my darlin', do you tell them
Little secrets that you shouldn't?
After midnight, when the boys talk about the girls."

Only here it's "When the Dems Talk About the Republicans," so there's a little more riding on it.

I like this clip in my reduced political self. It helps me get my "two-minute hate" on. It "proves" what I think they think. It justifies me. I'm just using the tools according to the rules of what passes for our present political discourse. Everybody does it. It's not "Gotcha" journalism, it's "We All Gotcha Now." It gives me a little frisson to do it. A little, cheap frisson.

Should I do it? Should I pass it on? After all, everybody else does. They do it. Worse that we do. Don't they?

At this point, the obvious answer is that "just because they do it doesn't mean I should." But that too is the easy answer, the false pose. The blunt fact I know is that I will do it when I can and when it seems right to do it. Those that swear off something in an absolute sense always strike me as suspect. There just isn't that much saintliness in today's world.

Nope. I'm going to continue to use the tools of our Brave New World like dowsing rods on today's political landscape waiting for that twitch, that little cheap frisson, that tells me I've detected "truth" as I like to find it.

I'll have to move quickly though. It's unlikely that the two men in the clip above will ever have a candid conversation in a commercial airliner again. Once burnt, twice silent.

After all, once we all learn that everything private can easily be made public why would anyone dare to speak their mind?

Posted by Vanderleun at August 30, 2008 10:56 PM
Bookmark and Share

Comments:

HOME

"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

I was lurking over at the hillary clinton forum where this video is also posted. Some of the woman there had had a run in with this same Fowler at the convention, he had apparently tried to strongarm them into putting up a front of party unity. Needless to say, they had a low opinion of this sucker even before they saw the video.

Posted by: chuck at August 31, 2008 3:57 AM

Hi -

This is the key to your post:

After all, once we all learn that everything private can easily be made public why would anyone dare to speak their mind?

Why indeed?

Because then only those who have the courage of their commitments and who are indeed honest and say what they mean will be the only ones worth listening to.

Now *that's* a revolutionary idea. All the lying bastards - i.e. 99.9% of all politicians - will be pointed out for the hypocrites and parasites that they are.

Could be the best thing that would ever happen to politics. This is what journalists *should* be doing, rather than prostituting themselves in the interest of a deeply flawed policy that belongs, at best, on the garbage heap of history ("democratic socialism" of the Democratic Party).

The idea of actually meaning what you say, instead of saying what the pollsters tell you you should be saying would, of course, spell the ruin for literally thousands of pollsters and pundits.

Good riddance.

Posted by: John F, Opie at August 31, 2008 5:07 AM

He obviously didn't get the memo that speech was given to liberals to help conceal their thoughts. This is one of the reasons people are reacting so strongly to Sarah Palin. It is completely refreshing to see and hear a politician who is truly authentic, meaning that there is no breach between being, thought, action, and language. In contrast, Obama is a deeply divided human being. He's not "complex," he's quite fundamentally confused.

In that regard, she really appears to be similar to Reagan. A politician who is not only likable, but lovable, is such a rare commodity, that it will have extremely unpredictable consequences that outweigh all the vapid political talk about "experience." As with Reagan, his handlers didn't care what his critics said, so long as they showed the images, because the images convey a deeper truth. Conversely, when you see Joe Biden, you can't help imagining the aggressively grinning closer at your local Pontiac dealership.

Posted by: Gagdad Bob at August 31, 2008 7:48 AM

"Should I do it? Should I pass it on?"


Exposing self-righteous Pharisees hell bent on ransacking the Constitution and cursing their fellow countrymen is always the right, good thing to do!

Posted by: Tanis (qp) at August 31, 2008 9:59 AM

Gerard, incidents such as this are precisely why I believe there is a God and that He has a sense of humor.

Posted by: Rich Fader at August 31, 2008 10:31 AM

In New Orleans, they would call this a "lagniappe", or "a little something extra".

We thought they were sphincters. Now we *KNOW* they are sphincters.

Posted by: Yanni.Znaio at August 31, 2008 12:49 PM

My friend, I'm going to have to agree with Tanis on this one.

It's not a question of who's being caught on tape today vs. who'll be caught tomorrow. It's a question of who's the person being snickered about, by the person being caught on tape today -- versus who'll be made a fool of tomorrow. People like Fowler are looking people like that, for whom they have so little regard, dead in the eye, and telling 'em sweet little lies with a straight face. Regularly.

You speak of a Brave New World in which privacy has been diminished, but your example is privacy cherished by people who seek to change the lives of millions of others, whom they'll never meet, in a single day. With apologies to Moulitsas, *screw them*. It may not be a public job Fowler has, but it certainly isn't a private one. And this deplorable "whistle-stop" practice of saying one thing in Bismarck and a different thing entirely in Atlantic City, is given a good shove toward history's dustbin in your Brave New World. That's an exchange I'm willing to make.

Posted by: Morgan K Freeberg at August 31, 2008 1:06 PM

It boils down to something I (as well as my employer as a matter of corporate policy) believe:

Character is what you do when (you think) nobody's looking (or listening, in this case.)

Posted by: Yanni.Znaio at August 31, 2008 1:19 PM

" That's an exchange I'm willing to make."

Did I say I wasn't willing to make it too. Re-read.

===
Should I do it? Should I pass it on? After all, everybody else does. They do it. Worse that we do. Don't they?

At this point, the obvious answer is that "just because they do it doesn't mean I should." But that too is the easy answer, the false pose. The blunt fact I know is that I will do it when I can and when it seems right to do it. Those that swear off something in an absolute sense always strike me as suspect. There just isn't that much saintliness in today's world.

Nope. I'm going to continue to use the tools of our Brave New World like dowsing rods on today's political landscape waiting for that twitch, that little cheap frisson, that tells me I've detected "truth" as I like to find it.
===

Posted by: vanderleun at August 31, 2008 1:55 PM

Thanks for the post. As always, spot on!

Posted by: Alexandra Greeley at August 31, 2008 2:00 PM

Thanks for the post. As always, spot on!

Posted by: Alexandra Greeley at August 31, 2008 2:01 PM

"Every morning for the past two weeks, California pastor Wiley Drake, a Southern Baptist, has invited Christians from around the country to join him on a two-hour conference call to pray for rain Thursday evening [at Obama's outdoor acceptance speech]. Mr. Drake deems Sen. Obama's support for abortion rights immoral. "We need some special intervention from God," Mr. Drake said."

(Wall St. Journal, 8/25/08)

Posted by: Nigel at August 31, 2008 6:59 PM

Did I say I wasn't willing to make it too. Re-read. At this point, the obvious answer is that "just because they do it doesn't mean I should." But that too is the easy answer, the false pose. The blunt fact I know is that I will do it when I can and when it seems right to do it. Those that swear off something in an absolute sense always strike me as suspect. There just isn't that much saintliness in today's world. " That's an exchange I'm willing to make."

Posted by: Xavierprs at November 11, 2012 12:20 PM