Timothy Burke, associate professor of history at Swathmore, writes one of the more lucid political blog entries I've read in a while. It's on the dangers of a "defective conception of how power actually works inside the Bush Administration." I love a good conspiratorial theory as well as the next person: it's really one of the better types of genre literature going these days. People just want to believe that higher powers (for good or evil) are in charge of their everyday lives. How else can one explain religion? The real injustice that most conspiracy theorists foist on the uncaring objects of their scorn is that of knowing too much. And this seems to be Professor Burke's point. You shouldn't call Bush stupid on the one hand, and assume he and his cohorts know what they're doing on the other. Well, most of the leftist rhetoric I've seen portrays Bush as an ignorant pawn of big business and definitely not the man in charge. But I may be wrong about that. As for the why of this Second Gulf War: I always assumed that because the US had helped Saddam gain power, and because he had subsequently turned around and spat in our collective faces, it was up to the US government to remove him: sort of like the Army terminating Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now with extreme prejudice.
On the lighter, linguistic side, Burke's use of the word agitprop in much the same way as I use the term regime in conversation when discussing Dubya's administration, sent me scurrying for a dictionary: a contraction from the Russian otdel agitatsii i propagandy 'department of agitation and propaganda.'
Posted by jim at April 6, 2003 09:51 AM