brian will . net

The United States is doomed

Glenn Greenwald

This unbelievably irrational, even stupid, concept has arisen and has now taken root — that to cut off funds for the war means that, one day, our troops are going to be in the middle of a vicious fire-fight and suddenly they will run out of bullets — or run out of gas or armor — because Nancy Pelosi refused to pay for the things they need to protect themselves, and so they are going to find themselves in the middle of the Iraq war with no supplies and no money to pay for what they need. That is just one of those grossly distorting, idiotic myths the media allows to become immovably lodged in our political discourse and which infects our political analysis and prevents any sort of rational examination of our options.

The only way Congress cutting off funds for the war would have a negative effect on troop security is if the President keeps the military in theatre past the time when the previously alloted funds run out, but so lodged is the conventional wisdom, that were Congress to cut off funds and then the President to keep the military in theatre anyway, Congress would get the blame for any consequences.

…[T]he notion that de-funding constitutes a failure to support the troops — in a way that, say, timetables do not — is just inane, not even in the realm of basic rationality or coherence.

And yet exactly this nonsensical notion was permitted not only to take hold, but to become unchallengeable conventional wisdom in our public debate over the war. The whole debate we just had was centrally premised on an idea that is not merely unpersuasive, but factually false, just ridiculous on its face. That a blatant myth could be outcome-determinative in such an important debate is a depressingly commonplace indictment of our dysfunctional media and political institutions.

And how about an indictment of the American public? Democrats are scared to challenge conventional wisdom because that makes them eggheads who think they’re smarter than Joe Six Pack. Were a Democratic politician to undergo a true Bulworth transformation, they wouldn’t just push against the boundaries set by the media, they would have the courage to call voters on their stupidity: ‘Fuck you, voters, for believing that. Fuck you for not paying attention.’ That’s the crass version, of course, but I’m serious: the only way to solve our problems is to elevate the debate, which means shaming the media and the public for keeping the debate mired in trivialities and for not entertaining arguments more than two clauses long.