In this blog I have often referred to
the Nixon Thesis of Conflict as the animating force in politics since
1968.
But there’s another way to look at the
same set of facts. That is, we’re in the Age of FUD.
FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. It’s
a tech term. It originated early in my career, when Microsoft would
employ it against smaller rivals in the PC software space.
Microsoft
would dismiss the efforts of other companies, claim that other
software might not work well with what it was building, even though
what it was building wasn’t built yet. This would cause business
software buyers to Fear what Microsoft might actually be doing, to become
Uncertain their own vendor could deliver truly compatible software,
and Doubt where their business should go.
But the idea of FUD, the use of PR in a
fact-free world to spin target consumers into following you, did not
originate with Bill Gates.
It started in the 1960s.
It started with the famed “credibility
gap” suffered by President Johnson during Vietnam. Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara talked about casualty counts, he talked about
supposed gains in winning “hearts and minds,” but the reality on
the ground,
the reality in the body bags, was quite different.
Rather than dismiss McNamara-ism, the
Nixon team embraced it. They had no “secret plan to end the war.”
They merely said they did. And after winning election they attacked
the media, attacked the academics, attacked their critics
relentlessly, buying the time they needed to bomb Hanoi into giving
them the “peace with honor” they needed to win re-election.
Reality didn’t matter. Only spin
mattered. What people believed mattered. FUD mattered.
And so it has gone, from that day to
this.
- Reagan’s Presidency was stage-managed, his flaws hidden from
view, the reality of Iran-Contra denied to the end, when Bush I
pardoned the whole gang. - Read my lips, no new taxes said the new
President, then he raised taxes. Message: I care, the same President
said, and lost not so much because of the reality but because people
had seen behind the curtain. - I did not have sex with that woman, said
his successor, unless you believe the meaning of “is” is that a
blowjob under the Oval Office desk constitutes sex – teenagers
don’t.
All the tricks being deployed by the
present Administration are a full generation old. They never had
anything new to offer. Rumsfeld and Cheney are little Nixon-ites.
Reality is what you claim it is. They really believe that. You may
have your math but I have THE math. Faith-based governing rather than
reality-based governing.
It’s not new.
And now we’re back where it all started. The credibility gap, again. The body bags, again. The talk of body counts, again.
So we have a chance to make another
choice. Because the Netroots, the party rising now, is not based on
ideology — not even an open source thesis — but reality. They ask to
be measured based on their ability to face up to, and deal with, the
real world, as it exists, not as they would like it to exist. They
embrace science, engineering, markets, and experimentation.
Nixonism was an ideology that made its own reality, that bent reality to its will. That’s not what Democrats offer in 2006.
Anyone who claims it is giving you FUD.
How can you lay this at the feet of Nixon? FUD has been a tactic used by those in power since the dawn of time.
How can you lay this at the feet of Nixon? FUD has been a tactic used by those in power since the dawn of time.
Dana puts quite a lot at the feet of Nixon. Nixon was a scary looking man with a scary sounding voice. Either Dana’s got some unresolved personal issues, or he’s invoking Nixon in his own personal variation on Godwin’s Law.
Perhaps, though, Dana’s being extremely clever and subtle by illustrating his point by utilizing exactly the same tactics he decries. For instance, this: “Read my lips, no new taxes said the new President, then he raised taxes.” This blatantly ignores the fact that the Democratically-controlled Congress of George H.W.Bush’s day rammed that tax increase down his throat by literally shutting down the government by absolutely refusing to pass any budget whatsoever that did not include it. You don’t have to take my word for it, just go read some contemporaneous news stories of the time. No, Dana clings to the fiction that it was some nefarious plan of Bush I to defraud the public. In doing so, Dana proudly embraces the Nixon Thesis for himself either purposely (which might be clever) or because he’s unable to see the irony of his position (which certainly isn’t) while simultaneously denouncing it for others. Either way, the prima facia evidence suggests that his position is hypocritical.
Dana puts quite a lot at the feet of Nixon. Nixon was a scary looking man with a scary sounding voice. Either Dana’s got some unresolved personal issues, or he’s invoking Nixon in his own personal variation on Godwin’s Law.
Perhaps, though, Dana’s being extremely clever and subtle by illustrating his point by utilizing exactly the same tactics he decries. For instance, this: “Read my lips, no new taxes said the new President, then he raised taxes.” This blatantly ignores the fact that the Democratically-controlled Congress of George H.W.Bush’s day rammed that tax increase down his throat by literally shutting down the government by absolutely refusing to pass any budget whatsoever that did not include it. You don’t have to take my word for it, just go read some contemporaneous news stories of the time. No, Dana clings to the fiction that it was some nefarious plan of Bush I to defraud the public. In doing so, Dana proudly embraces the Nixon Thesis for himself either purposely (which might be clever) or because he’s unable to see the irony of his position (which certainly isn’t) while simultaneously denouncing it for others. Either way, the prima facia evidence suggests that his position is hypocritical.