BP's Spill in the Gulf as narrated by Dr. Seuss

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Your Means Will Shape Your End

Over at Waking Up Now, Rob Tisinai has an interesting article about how what we do influences how things end up. Whether or not we debate if the ends justify the means or if the means are our ends, Rob makes the point that

Your Means Will Shape Your End: "

... The means you choose won’t determine just whether you reach your
goal — it will change the way that goal plays out when you bring it into
reality.
I made the Republicans in Congress video because I saw the party orchestrating a campaign of lies on issue after issue. These weren’t petty rhetorical overstatements, or the political sleight-of-hand we expect during a reelection bid. This was a coordinated, party-wide effort. Republicans seemed to toss out statement after statement with no regard for the truth, and if one of them gained political traction then they all started echoing it. Who cares if death panels are a vicious myth? If the lie helps us, let’s use it!

Forget for a moment whether this strategy is moral. Ask rather, If it succeeded, how would it shape the result? Republicans would have won their bid for power. But what else? The electorate would be deceived, ignorant, and just not capable of making good choices. Media institutions like Fox would be little more than ministries of propaganda. The ruling elite would rely heavily the “noble lie” strategy: if you know what’s best for the American people, then craft a story, any story, that will boost public opinion.

Weapons of mass destruction? Ooo, that’s a good one. If we push that, along with a fake link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda and Iraq, then we can invade the country, set up a democracy there, and change the whole political equation in the middle east!

You set up this structure to get yourself in power, but it doesn’t go away after the election is over. Instead you’ve got an entire deceit industry whose new chief goal is its own survival and exaltation. Once upon a time the Republican Party used buffoons like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as political tools. Now those tools are able to frighten the hell out of party officials. In 2008, the party advanced an obscure governor to boost a presidential campaign. They told her what to say, where to be, how to dress. Now some of them beg Sarah Palin for endorsements, and she delivers them in speeches that reflect her fiction of the moment.

Your means will shape your end.

Jump over to his blog to read the rest.
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BP demotivator, for the win

Via Rachel Maddow's Maddowblog:

BP demotivator, for the win:


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