Escalation surges

I notice the Liberals are actually having some success in the propaganda war and it’s interesting to see how the major media are dealing with it. You can tell that the pro-Bush writers, who are legion, predominantly use the word “surge” whereas the liberals have taken up the “escalation” banner and use it with abandon. The poor saps who at least make a pretense of being objective are getting all mixed up, using “surge” in some graphs and “escalation” in others.

Well, that’s progress for the Libs, I guess. Even though I think, as detailed below, that using the wussy word "escalation" in place of the strong and accurate "troop increase" is a strategic mistake, at least they are actually having some success framing the debate. Hard to remebember the last time that happened.

Even though I don't agree with the strategy, I don't blame politicians for being politicians. Propaganda is a large part of what they do. S

But the media, what's their excuse? This whole semantic debacle is yet another example of how pathetic the press has become. They are not supposed to be doing propaganda, at least not in the news pages, yet it seems that they have lost the ability to use words in an independent manner. Just read the British press to see how professionals handle it. In every instance, unless they are quoting someone directly, they say “troop increase.” What has happened to us?

Yes, that’s mostly a rhetorical question. But I have an inkling, so to speak, of the answer. In short, we are living in the era of the idiots. The way George W. Bush promotes sycophants and rewards failure is reflected throughout our culture, including the media. And as the rights of corporations continue to subsume the rights of individuals and the current crop of idiots continue to weed out the more competent and replace them with like-minded losers, we can look forward to a whole lot more stupid down the road.

Update: The Daily Howler wins the prize for being the first I've noticed to say the obvious, that the press should use "troop increase" rather than the propaganda phrasings of the right or left. Why is this so difficult?