March 29 2007
A March 29th New York Times story illustrates the problems of
politics-by-Anglo-journalism. President Bush tried to tell a story
about Iraq with reference to two bloggers, one of whom said about
a recent increase of U.$. troops in Iraq:
"Displaced families are returning home, marketplaces are seeing more activity, stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now. Our people want to see this effort succeed. We hope the governments in Baghdad and America do not lose their resolve."(1)The New York Times's Sheryl Gay Stolberg countered saying of the bloggers Bush quoted "On Dec. 9, 2004, they met in the Oval Office with Mr. Bush."
The storytellers Bush and New York Times both accomplished nothing. If Baghdad markets were not reopening and doing better, the New York Times furnished no concrete information to prove their point. All that the New York Times accomplished was questioning the credibility of a pair of bloggers. As a matter of fact, the two dentists Bush quoted could be total lackeys and it still could be true that some markets are re-opening, because U.$. troops are standing there.
Story-tellers tend to be obsessed with "credibility," a hopeless dead-end in bourgeois methods of thinking. Markets either are or are not reopening in Baghdad as the surge of troops goes on. That does not depend one iota on the credibility of Bush, the New York Times or anyone else. If we asked everyone in Baghdad what was going on, we would find people both saying markets are improved or not improved or that Amerikans' troop surge is a good thing. There would likely be stoners, drunks, murderers and saints on both sides of the question, so "credibility" does not solve anything. Almost all major questions are of that nature. The New York Times should be offering a way to settle the question of whether markets are doing better with the surge and whether that is a big enough question to resolve the overall question of intervention in Iraq, but instead the New York Times is in a battle of interpretation of small shreds of data with Bush.
On the point of Bush's that "our people want to see this effort succeed," that is wrong. Polls are showing Iraqis want the united $tates out,(2) so whatever two dentists who visited Bush want is not terribly relevant to the overall picture on that question. The fact that the New York Times even talks about what Bush said on this drags down the possible understanding level of New York Times readers. For its own reasons, the New York Times wants to duke it out on the "credibility" question, at the cost of the general picture. What lacks "credibility" is the whole approach or method of thinking. When Bush points to some bloggers covering up majority Iraqi opinion, the New York Times should do as MIM does and point to the polls.
In a story next to the same New York Times story, the vacuous word "credibility" occurs again, as in the Democrats search for a whole foreign policy with "credibility." ("Building on Unity Over Iraq: Foreign Policy for Democrats") So we can see "credibility" is some kind of holy grail for the Anglo individualists.
We at MIM see an economics of "credibility," no real point in talking about credibility itself. The U.$. labor aristocracy solution for all problems is deportation, imprisonment and turning other countries into parking lots. The typical Euro-Amerikans are stupid enough to fantasize that if they took over in Iraq, they would not be the next people bombed. Ideas not along these lines lack "credibility," because of underlying causes shaping Amerikkkan thinking.
The problem for capitalism is that until someone makes a profit from an idea, it lacks credibility. Some people are starting to profit from solar power, so that is on the edge of thinkable, but not compared with taking over Iraq for its oil. Castro's first major speech out of the hospital was against bio-fuels, because he is afraid of what it will do to world hunger when people switch to corn-for-fuel instead of corn-for-eating.(3) Ethanol is already in use in the united $tates and other countries, so it is thinkable. There are already federal lobbies and laws for ethanol.
MIM trains people to think anonymously and in group terms. If one's answers to questions rely on following a leader or a question of individual "credibility," one is stuck in pre-scientific reasoning. The idea that individuals have varying levels of "credibility" is a step up from when people assigned themselves zero worth against a god-sent king. Now when one chooses to follow a leader, it should be as a stop-gap measure, because one knows that otherwise one will do worse in politics. For as large a portion of social or political questions as we can manage, we should decide based on the overall picture. What matters is not how one individual compares with a king or against god, but how we organize ourselves as a society and how to do that best. Ideas about "credibility," "individuality" and even "humyn rights" are inherently bourgeois. They focus on intra-individual comparison, discerning differences that justify classes. The New York Times and Bush are posturing for "credibility," because they both seek to rule as members of a bourgeoisie. Among the proletarian camp, vanguard leaders are the first to understand that we have to get out of arguing with the bourgeoisie on its terms. The vanguard leaders set up a scientific party to lead the exploited and oppressed out of the morass of pre-scientific thinking.
Notes:
1. "Troop Rise Aids Iraqis, Bush Says, Citing Bloggers," New
York Times 29Mar07, p. a7.
2. "More than six in 10 Iraqis now say that
their lives are going badly -- double the percentage who said so in
late 2005 -- and about half say that increasing U.S. forces in the
country will make the security situation worse, according to a poll of
more than 2,200 Iraqis conducted for ABC News and other media
organizations."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR2007031900421.html
Even the White House ideological journal called the National Review had to admit
that 53% of Iraqis believe security would improve if the united $tates left.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmE3NzVmMWEyMGM3ODA2NGM0MWRlMDY2Yjk3YzkwYTA=
3. Robin Stringer, "Castro Attacks Bush on Biofuels in First Article Since Surgery,"
Bloomberg wire service 29Mar2007.