Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin

Novelist and very sharp social commentator Larry Beinhart's main premise in this somewhat breezy but always incisive book is that the truth is right in front of our eyes but we are unable to see it because it is obscured by a prevailing fog of lies and misinformation. He notes, for example, that the truth about Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to Al Qaeda and the weapons of mass destruction that weren't there, and especially the disaster that was likely to follow if we invaded Iraq, was known, available and understood, but unfortunately buried on page three or four of the New York Times or in an academic tome or on some obscure Website or beneath the radar of the six o'clock news so that your average person (especially your average congressperson) didn't know about it. Besides they (and we) were watching Fox News, which was putting "the news in context," was giving "it a perspective," was telling us "how to think about the stories" it reported. In fact, as Beinhart so incisively notes, Fox News was and is doing us "a service" because even if Fox News has it wrong, "for many of their viewers it is still more satisfying than the conventional, non-judgmental approach that leaves the audience with work to do." (p. 182) This sort of incisive understanding of what is really going on is part of what makes this little book such a fantastic read. Beinhart sees things in a way that others do not. He sees past the spin and the hype and the conventional wisdom to what is really going on--or has gone on. He sees that what has propelled the right to power in this country and has persuaded its leaders to embrace hypocrisy and authoritarianism is a belief by many that "the source of order is authority" and that hypocritical lies are often necessary to maintain that order. He recalls that George W. Bush "mocked Vice President Al Gore for acknowledging marijuana use, saying, "Baby boomers have got to grow up and say, yeah, I may have done drugs, but instead of admitting it, say to kids, don't do them." (p. 96) This "Bush logic" in part explains why he and his administration spew out so many lies and so much misinformation. Quite simply, Bush believes lies and secrecy are good policy. The general public are like children. They should not be told the truth lest it misguide them or confuse them. Beinhart asserts that hypocrisy and mendacity are in fact part of the Republican Party's program and have "a great deal [to] do with its appeal." (p. 96) The idea is we like being lied to, or at least we believe that other people--the unwashed masses probably--need to be lied to, and this can only be done effectively if the lies come from authority figures. Order is made by authority. "A choice, a statement, or a rule is not made valid by logic or proof or evidence. It comes from the authority of the source." (p. 96) Of course the real authority in the world is empirical fact as understood by rationality and by the sciences, not just the hard sciences, but the

Easy reading, short but informative. I highly recommend this book and believe it should be necessary reading for every american.

Who needs sleep, anyway: as with Beinhart's last book, The Librarian, this one kept me glued to the page througout half the night with it's sarcastic humor and disturbing observations: The Big Lie, a propaganda technique cherished by Hitler, is alive and well and has come to new heights of perfection with the Bush administration. Beinhart makes no empty claims when he shows that clear, unequivocal and published documentation for the government's policies (and failures) exist - court rulings, official investigations, confirmed media reports, economic statistics, frank testimony from the power players about their intentions and motives - and yet, the obvious conclusions are lost in the fog, turned upside down, or remain unknow to the general population. "Fog Facts" stands in the tradition of Noam Chomsky's poignant analyses "Necessary Illusions" and "Manufacturing Consent" as it shows by example how large scale indoctrination and the selling of obviously wrong, irrational and detrimental policies can succeed in a democratic society with a nominally free media system. As a slow reader I appreciate how Beinhart focusses on a well selected sample of cases without getting lost in minutiae, how he keeps the writing crisp and entertaining, and the book short (187p). An index and footnotes throughout make it a valuable reference tool, and the associated website offers further material and invites readers to share their own fog facts. So what's a citizen to do against the evils described? The book itself is an analysis, not a manual. As such it provides case studies of the major issues of recent years and provides excellent ammunition to bring reason into the discussion. But while not given explicitely, answers to the "what to do?" questions are easy to infer: Start with skepticism towards power, read watchdog sites that monitor the players and the political PR industry, and make your voice heard when politicians and the media start obscuring the issues.

This is quite an extraordinary book, one of five I picked up while browsing at Barnes & Noble today. It gets a full five stars for elegant writing, logical presentation, and a lovely index. I read it together with Noam Chomsky's Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project) interviews, and the two complement one another. "Fog facts" are facts that are out in the open, but "invisible" in the sense that no one acts on them. The stolen Florida election--30,000 plus disenfranchised blacks *and* "overcount" votes where Al Gore was both checked and written, rejected as invalid instead of returned for verification--the specious claims against Iraq; the 9-11 Commission apologia; the list goes on. For myself, the most interesting fog facts dealt with the number of terrorists caught and jailed by France and other nations, as a tiny fraction of the cost of invading Afghanistan and Iraq, and with little to show for it excepts casualties, including significant numbers of US amputations being concealed from the public. The author "outs" Judith Miller as an agent of Karl Rove in the run-up to the war in Iraq, earnestly selling the Administration's line on weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps one reason she was both favored by Rove in the current Valerie Plume case, and also sought to protect Rove. THe author gets the jump on the current scandal of the disappearing billions in Iraq--not just the billions for Halliburton in sole source contracts, but the outright theft and squandering of the $19 billion in Iraqi bank credits that Paul Bremer managed to fritter away--and they still do not have running water or electricity. THe author quotes several times from Mein Kamph in discussing the extremist Republican use of "the big lie" and the comparisons are disconcertingly clear. He weaves a tale of draft-dodging hypocrisy among the Bush Junior and Cheney gang that is all too distasteful when combined with their corruption in favoring Halliburton--his listing of Cheney's ignominious failures as CEO of HAlliburton are fun--and also a sign that Halliburton knew what it was doing in suffering the fool that would deliver the people's treasure. His accounting of Bush Juniors many failures in business, each time living on his father's name and getting bailed out by the forgiving rich that he has repaid many times over with tax cuts and exemptions from asbestos claims, among other loopholes, is dismaying in the extreme. We "know" these things, but we do not act. On page 82 he repeats what is now perhaps the most famous quote to come out of the Bush Junior White House, where an arrogant aide dismisses a "reality-based" person and says that the U.S. is an empire now, and makes its own reality. That the reality we are making is one of our own destruction escapes this witless aide to the President, so full of himself is he. The books adds to my understanding of the current Social Security arrangements as a pass through syst

Is our current administration intentionally lying? Yes. Fog Facts is about key data evaporating into obscurity. Fog Facts is NOT a Right or Left wing propaganda book. This is an anti-propaganda book. Professor Douglas Rushkoff recently published that the best way to help the masses see the Truth is to speak plainly. Game on. Beinhart has filled this bill. In Wag The Dog Beinhart taught me more about propaganda than I had learned from multiple other texts. Fog Facts reveals the path that lead to our modern state of mass delusion. So long as most Americans keep seeing "the other side" as responsible for corruption, our current media system is secure. The greatest trick our media has pulled is the illusion of the two-party system. Both sides are ignoring fundamental lies and unprecedented changes to our constitution. The two-sides is two-faces of the same machine. When humans are two-faced we don't trust them. Harry Blackstone used to walk a live elephant on stage and nobody would see him do that. It appeared as magic. Beinhart explains how crucial facts are lead on to the main stage of mass media without anybody seeming to notice. Presto, the world has changed. Media is not the magic by misdirection I was envisioning, it is a mass willingness to suspend disbelief. Thank you Larry for helping me better understand the mechanism. However, I don't think you have gone far enough. Heads of media should be fired for misrepresenting the facts. Those that forged data should be charged with treason. Those that ordered the data be forged should be charged with crimes against humanity. But, as you point out, they changed the courts to preclude this possibility. If this book disappears without debate, it will simply be one more bit of evidence to show the fix is in.