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Location: Granite Falls, North Carolina, United States

I'm an ordained United Methodist minister no longer pastoring churches, a former media producer with skills ten years out of date, a writer trying to sell my first novel, and a sales associate keeping body and soul together working for the People's Republic of Corporate America. I'm married to the most wonderful woman in the world, who was my best friend for 17 years before we married.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

On the Conventional Wisdom

The Mainstream Media (MSM), also known as the Corporate media, have a certain world view that they take for granted and expect their readers/viewers/listeners to subscribe to, as well.

First, they assume that being right on Iraq from the beginning makes you wrong now (e. g. Dennis Kucinich), but being wrong at the beginning makes you worthy of being taken seriously now (e.g. the Baker Commission).

Second, they assume that those who speak loudest firstest set the terms of the debate to follow. Example: The conventional wisdom about Augusto Pinochet is that his regime, evil, brutal, and repressive though it was, still caused the country to prosper. The Washington Post and New York Times, etc., I am told, are following that line. Not true. He overthrew a democratically-elected government and instituted a reign of terror, during which Chile did not prosper as much as much as it did under Allende, nor as much as that which followed his reign. In fact the MSM is ascribing that prosperity to Allende.

Today's third example is that the United States sometimes has to ally itself with evil dictators to advance American interests. I challenge anyone to show me where we came out on the wrong side of history when we sided with the forces of human rights and democracy. We came out on the wrong side when we backed Somosa in Nicaragua, and when we overthrew a democratically-elected government in Iran and installed the Shah, and when the Reagan Administration sent Donald Rumsfeld over to Iraq to court Saddam Hussein as an ally when the Iranians took exception to us and had their revolution which turned anti-American. We were on the wrong side of history when we backed Manuel Noriega in Panama, as Bush I showed when he started a war in order to arrest him. Well, the list can go on and on. But where have we been wrong when we supported human rights? But then, when have we supported human rights and taken them seriously?

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