News Fatigue

So there comes a point, where things just don't excite you anymore. Where revelations that might have once had you up in arms are simply shrugged at, because, well...you kinda suspected them all along and the proof isn't that shocking. Here's a sample. Maybe you believe that the war in Iraq is and always was about oil politics. Maybe you think that WMDs were just a pretext and democracy just a rationalization. If so, news from the UK that intelligence was being fixed to promote the war in July 2002 comes as no revelation. Read the link. There are a fair number of other shockers that at this late date somehow fail to be shockers.

Curiously, the memo is so openly damning that hard right advocates are claiming it is too perfect (ie fake) . We all know you can't trust Brit intel anyway, right? If they can work the cognitive dissonance thing through Abu Garib, don't expect this to be an eye-opener.

And thus it goes...stall it out...delay...postpone...by the time the truth is known, your opponents will be too tired to villify you, your admirers won't believe it, and everyone else will be too forgetful to care. Even a full post in, I can't muster the energy to be more than mildly disturbed.


UPDATE: The implication from what I wrote above is that these tactics are good policy. And they are a good policy for the party in power. The one flipside is that I have viewed this from the perspective of the US, or US citizen. An international observer, like the thousands in foreign governments, does not have a personal rage that burns itself out, nor do they have a forgiving heart. The failure to admit guilt means that you think it's ok, or at least that you can get away with it. And that can't be attractive to others. As incremental bits slip, they make for continual bad press for the US. And since the US never "comes clean" with the full story, well we just look bad. Does it matter how we look? Maybe, maybe not. That depends on whether we want to lead the world, or buy it.