Blurring the Border between Reality and Perception (2)

~ Continued from Part 1 ~

This is the second instalment in a series of posts on the effects of Postmodernism (Pomo, or cultural Marxism, or subjectivism, or relativism) on journalism and the MSM. To remind ourselves of the essence of the trouble: the deliberate fallacy of their pet philosophy that objective reality does not exist. This causes a blurring of the border between what's real, and what is perception: the recipe for a global nut-house!

One pernicious consequence of this fallacy is a moral one: the denial of good and bad, right of wrong, truth or lie, or to put it in another way: everybody's 'right' from his or her own particular point of view, and everything 'bad' is only called 'bad' because it doesn't fit into the present idea of what constitutes society (once the egalitarian collectivism is established even pedophilia will become a 'good' thing).

Read here that "Julien Benda, in his 1928 classic "La Trahison de Clercs", decried with prophetic accuracy how the abandonment of objective truths abetted (my emphasis) totalitarian ideologies, which led to the cataclysmic destruction of World War II. The author (Diana West in her new book "The Death of the Grown-Up") identifies the "Trahison de Clercs" of our time: The complete failure of Western intellectuals to acknowledge the heinous consequences of the living Islamic institutions of jihad war and dhimmitude." Actually I can go much further than that: the abandonment of objective truth is the essence of the philosophy that underpins totalitarian ideologies!

Another catastrophic consequence of this deliberate fallacy is, that fact - which is rooted in objective reality - does not exist either. That, is a tough conclusion if your occupation is, observation and description of facts on a daily basis, as is the case in journalism.

So what we see reported lately, aren't so much cool, detached descriptions of the real world, as much as the reporter's personal opinion, the 'narrative' from his perspective, which, as is often the case, happens to be multicultural and Leftist - or he wouldn't be a Pomo in the first place.

Aside ... unconsciously society at large has picked up much of Pomo's faulty thought processes. If in fear of being infected, the PMF offers help in finding out to what extent you've been affected: the list provides a number of eye-openers to get you back on orthologica. But a sure sign of trouble is "... in my view this colour is red, perhaps ...", instead of "... this, is red".

News reports from the Middle East have become synonymous with subjectivity: laced with personal (emotional) involvement (the BBC has become practically a party in Gaza!), spin and counterspin, political bias, censoring, selective emphasizing, etc., etc. Each and every death that occurs within Iraq's borders is brought to me personally, 'as it happens' by CNN's and the BBC's Breaking News Email Service, a lame effort in emphasizing the frequency and the number of casualties.

Lately we are informed that a 'paradigm shift' in the press' attitude towards Iraq may be in the making, reflecting a shift in public opinion (lies don't endure) and in the attitude of the Iraqis themselves.

There's hope yet, but it will be next to impossible to ween the lost souls of the anti-war crowd of their immature psychological coping devices. They much rather see all-out fratricide develop in Iraq resulting in another few million hecatombs on the sacrificial alter of collectivism (Vietnam is a case in point), than to accept a BusHitler victory for democracy and the advancement of freedom. At this point I'd like to venture a qualification of this mentality: pathologically malicious.

While that is going on, the editor of The New Republic had the gall to respond to the first questioning of the 'Baghdad Diarist's plausibility, by attacking the skeptics' motives, complaining that "some Conservatives make 'a living, denying any bad news that emanates from Iraq'", a chutzpah if there ever was one in light of the above, and as is made clear by Winds of Change's post "Man, People Are So Gullible...".

The shrink says it's a natural consequence of projection: if you think of yourself as a nice and peaceful person, while actually you are full of wrath and hatred, the psychological coping device of projection makes the object of your wrath the one that's hateful, divisive, full of vitriol and bile, bigotted, intolerant and hatemongering ... something like ... this! Hat tip Atlas Shrugs.

Sorry to disappoint those expecting neat little lists: it so happens they're all in Part 1 and 3.

~ Continued in Part 3: ... rummaging through my own recent archive yields not only ... the Beauchamp Affair, but also throws some other light on the Abu Graib affair, (a) "high quality disinformation operation" ~