Dumb and Dumber

[niimki]

Today Rumsfield said we are "losing
the media war with extremists". He says
its because they are able to use media like blogging and web works that our government
is stagnant about. Duh!

That's because its hard to lie when somebody can come right out and ask you

Comments

[dragonvpm]

Eh, I don't know if I entirely agree with that assessment. Sure, I despise our current administration and I can't wait until they're out, but having seen what extremists did with the whole cartoon fiasco makes me think that extremists aren't much better (and if you followed the cartoon thing you saw that they have plenty of technologically savy people working on their side).

If anything I think the big PR problem is that the administration is stuck trying to put out a message that most of the "people" can get behind while the extremists are (almost by definition) only interested in attracting the really "hardcore" people. If you're running an organization that uses suicide bombers you don't want just any pansy who's on the fene about the "cause" you want a True Believer (tm) and surprisingly True Believers come from all walks of life, there are geeks, soldiers, housewives, etc... who are willing to turn part of their brain off and go with what the group wants.

Contrast that with our government and what the administration has to do and it's pretty easy to see that they can't just be content with attracting 10, 20, 30 percent of the population. At the very least they need to somehow convince >50% of those who vote to vote for them and their "cause" and they have to reach some kind of consensus between the president and several hundred other politicians (house reps, senators, governors, etc...) and they can't really use the hardline techniques available to extremists because unlike extremists it does them no good to get 30% of the population on your side if you manage to unite the other 70% against you (the joys of democracy).

If anything, I think this administration is showing us that we can't be a nation of extremists or blind followers, the only way anyone is ever going to make any real progress is by taking the high road as a moderate and finding legitimate solutions that most people can live with and that everyone can tolerate instead of turning off huge sections of the population by being a fundie nutjob and not getting anything done.

[niimki]

I agree with some of that. The cartoon was/is nuts. I think there is extremism on both sides of this, including the Bush administration. Cooler heads need to prevail all the way around. As far as I'm concerned, I think the technology stands some chance of helping that. Or at least I hope it does.