Sunday's Tremolo # 5

The Common Loon has a call named the tremolo. This "insane laughter", voiced rapidly is an alarm that shows agitation or fear of predators or other loons in the neighbourhood. On Sundays, I have chosen to be opinionated and to share news, policies and or laws that agitate and scare me.

This is a bit of a continuation of the tremelo from last week. I thought of calling it Lies Part Deux but the Power of Propaganda is more fitting. In twenty to thirty years time there will be University courses that will explore how the United States and George W. Bush were able to successfully fool it's citizens into supporting a war. No small feat but one that the American administration has pulled off.

I understand any dig at George W. Bush is an easy one. So I won't instead let's look at how he's made it as president. He's made the right connections, appeased the right people and he's got a thick family wallet. These are conditons to rule the world. Who cares how smart this man is, the truth is he simply doesn't need to be smart or work so hard. His machine does and it's message is all that matters. This is how they've done it.

Good ole George W got his war in Iraq by rambling on about Weapons of Mass Destruction. He helped popularize an acronym. Acronyms work, they're short and make you sound like you know what you're talking about even if you can't even identify what each letter means. By preaching about WMDs for months and how the UN and it's mission failed to find WMDs (that never existed) he helped cement the image of the UN as a useless commodity. This is a great start.

George then got busy by convincing enough people, congressmen, senators and the media that this fight with Saddam was the right one. He did it through forged documents, a lazy media and with the help of an indifferent population more concerned with sports and celebrities. He also stood in front of message boards and talked in sound bites. When asked questions about his decisions he repeated his sound bites in exactly the way his trainers told him to do.

When confronted with the WMDs that still don't exist, he succeeded at changing the message. Another great move. This time he took the public on a new path of reasoning of liberation and the spread democracy, much sexier than WMDS and people accepted it. He's brilliant.

Future world leaders take note, propaganda these days isn't so tough. People are preoccupied being happy and rich, they simply don't care. I hope this isn't a trend that sticks around for much longer because it doesn't bode well for the rest of us who do care.