Defining Reading Comprehension Down
Martin Kramer is a “fellow” of the usual assortment of right-wing full-employment societies (Olin Institute, etc.). He suffers from a textbook case of Conservative Reading Comprehension Disorder. Right now he’s all het up because he’s got the goods on “Chas Freeman”, specifically regarding Freeman’s position on whether or not resentment over US policy toward Israel is really a motivating cause of Muslim terrorism:
Freeman, 1/2004:
The heart of the poison is the Israel-Palestinian conundrum. When I was in Saudi Arabia, I was told by Saudi friends that on Saudi TV there were three terrorists who came out and spoke. Essentially the story they told was that they had been recruited to fight for the Palestinians against the Israelis, but that once in the training camp, their trainers gradually shifted their focus away from the Israelis to the monarchy in Saudi Arabia and to the United States. So the recruitment of terrorists has a great deal to do with the animus that arises from that continuing and worsening situation.Freeman, 10/1988:
Mr. bin Laden’s principal point, in pursuing this campaign of violence against the United States, has nothing to do with Israel. It has to do with the American military presence in Saudi Arabia, in connection with the Iran-Iraq issue. No doubt the question of American relations with Israel adds to the emotional heat of his opposition and adds to his appeal in the region. But this is not his main point.
Yeah, so?
Well:
Does Freeman really believe that Israel’s actions caused Bin Laden’s terror? Who knows? He’s put forward two completely contradictory explanations. One would like to believe that in his heart of hearts, he still knows what he knew in 1998, that Bin Laden’s “campaign of violence against the United States, has nothing to do with Israel.” One would like to believe that in 2006, he was cynically shilling for the Saudis when he blamed 9/11 on “our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel’s approach.” Because if he wasn’t just cynically shilling, he’s gone off the rails.
Or there’s a third alternative, which is that, aside from being more than 5 years apart, the quotes aren’t contradictory, and Kramer’s question is pointless because Freeman didn’t say Israel’s actions caused Bin Laden’s terrorism.
It’s no more than a basic question of reading comprehension to note that the first quote deals with the mechanisms by which terrorists are recruited while only the second deals with Bin Laden’s underlying reason for hostility to the US. You can tell this because he uses confusing and evasive language like “the recruitment of terrorists” in the first quote, and “bin Laden’s principal point, in [his] campaign of violence against the United States” in the second. And in fact both quotes posit US intervention in Saudi Arabia as the actual reason for Bin Laden-sponsored terrorism, not anything to do with Israel – thus making Kramer’s question unnecessary for anyone with better reading skills than Kramer. The fact that there is widespread resentment over Israel (does Kramer seriously contend there is not?) is not incompatible with the claim that that is not bin Laden’s personal main concern, or with the claim that it still serves as a useful recruiting tool for him nonetheless (before re-directing the recruits’ focus onto Saudi Arabia). And if Freeman did change his mind, it’s hardly puzzling that things might have changed in 5 years, and after 9/11, notwithstanding that the two quotes are perfectly compatible to begin with.
So where does Kramer get off with his “completely contradictory explanations”, “cynically shilling”, and “gone off the rails”? Well, by being a second-rate right-wing hack, basically. This is nothing more than the Noise Machine grinding its clanky, ill-engineered gears, yet again.
I’m embarrassed to admit I have no idea who “Chas Freeman” is. Apparently old Chuckles was nominated to some sort of diplomatic or security position and has got the wingers into an uproar over the suspicion he might not be a total toady about Israel. And for all I know, he’s not, though dudes who allow themselves to be called “Chas” and are not actually signers of the Declaration of Independence are not exactly my epitome of backbone-having mo-fo’s. But I digress. The point is, there’s nothing in these quotes to substantiate any such claim, and, even more to the point, saying there is makes you an idiot. These wingnuts, whether neo- or paleo-, are simply mentally incompetent, in the literal sense. They cannot handle basic tasks of thought or language. Yet they take themselves, and each other, seriously as analysts and thinkers, and somehow are given credit as such by the media, simply because they are endorsed by the Remedial Party.
…or they can, but ignore the actual meaning of things and sell a false bill of goods to their audiences instead.
Look, most of my friends look at me as a real smart and incisive guy – even though most of them are pretty smart themselves, certainly smarter than your average Joe. I’m not saying this to stroke myself, but just to make a point. I can mislead a whole bunch of my friends about things that are pretty straightforward just by being emphatically and eloquently in opposition to something.
You don’t think, Kevin, you could take some objectively straightforward statement and convince a whole lot of people less intelligent than you that you’re right about it, even though you are totally misrepresenting in it, and those people just read it for themselves and (correctly) don’t see what you claim to? Of course you can do that!
That’s what happen when people defer to those who they feel are supposed to be smarter than they are. When they do so, they question their most basic competencies when they are in contradiction with the perceived authority. Quite frankly, this is the same dynamic that allowed people to agree to loans they intuitively knew they couldn’t afford to buy homes they wouldn’t be able to pay for. The “expert” told them otherwise, so they deferred to the alleged expertise.
Really, I think this happens all the time. Well, if the guy from Yale says marijuana is extremely addictive physically and an appetite suppressant, well he’s got a degree from Yale so he must be right. So those who want to mislead just exercise “authority” through dramaturgy and watch the yokels gobble it up – even if they keep having a strange suspicion that it tastes like shit.
Of course, some are that just actually that dumb.
you don’t think you could take some objectively straightforward statement and convince a whole lot of people less intelligent than you that you’re right about it, even though you are totally misrepresenting in it, and those people just read it for themselves and (correctly) don’t see what you claim to? Of course you can do that!
Nobody listens to the things I say that are actually true! I’m hardly going to start misleading them. It’s more than I can do to lead them.
But I’m not entirely sure what you’re getting at, here. This Kramer clown is one of the opinion leaders, or at least he’s at one of the self-annointed right-wing fonts of opinion. He’s not being misled – he’s the one coming up with this nonsense. The right-wing bloggers who fawned on his “brilliant” analysis and have been carping about Freeman for the last few days may have been misled by Kramer, but they, too, are supposedly the thinkers of the right wing. Maybe the dittoheads don’t know any better (though I still think they should – refer back to the long thread that preceded this post), but these people claim to be doing their own thinking.
When will the right wing ever actually be held accountable for their own incompetence? You simply cannot fail badly enough to lose face over there. But the least we can do is give them the compliment of imagining that their words actually mean something – and reacting accordingly.
I hold them accountable – I just don’t see those at the tippy top as ignorant fools who are too fucking stupid to comprehend straightforward sentences, or empirical data. Most of the these people have everything to gain (and their entire worthiness in terms of their identifies, accolades, standard of living, and self-respect) by either knowingly shoveling bullshit all the way to the bank, or aggressively cultivating and nurturing their own cognitive dissonance.
Why would anybody support the war on drugs, for example. Simple history shows it is ineffective, rooted in racism, and a catalyst, not a deterrent to violence. Further, it’s takes only 100 level philosophy course to realize that drug use has nothing to do with ethics – I assume most of the leading pundits/policy makers at least went to one year of college.
So, either they stumbled into getting wealthy by promoting things that were initially sensible, and slowly become more and more out of touch as they became more wealthy and eventually convinced themselves of a bunch of lies to protect their way of life and ego – it’s easier to go on being stupid than admit you have to relearn eveything.
Or, perhaps they know that the war on drugs is about selectively disenfranchising undesirable segments of our propulation and hitting all your frat brothers off with some scratch along the way.
I think it makes much more sense to envision these people as evil geniuses (even if unintentional) than simple minded half-literate buffoons. Shit, I can read a cigarette box, but it didn;t stop me from smoking (down to 1 or 2 a week). It’s not about not understanding, it’s about wanting personal gratification more than anything else!
Note that “comprehesion disorder” nicely covers both miscomprehension and distortion of comprehension.
On the other hand, you can rarely lose money betting on stupidity.
Point taken, Dan.
Betting on stupidity is usually a good bet, indeed. But, at the same time if those in question aren’t deliberately misleading others, if there’s isn’t something of an unofficial c-word going on, then what does it say about our aptitude that we can’t defeat the room-temperature-IQ-gang in the battle for dominant share of voice in social/political/economic/scientific/etc. discourse. So, to keep pointing to “facts” misses the mark, because “beliefs” are often a lot more ethereal than that.
What I believe is the most important point of my previous comment is the notion that people don’t necessarily “believe” what is necessarily most likely true by objective standards or field-specific consensus. People believe that which reaffirms their values/decisions/work. So, even those who actually believe (as opposed to manipulate) nonsense, often aren’t basing that belief on objective, empirical evidence at all. The tail wags the dog here.
You don’t have to get into complex economic or political debates to see this at work. Just ask a cross section of Yankee fans about Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez – you’d easily conclude they’ve never seen the backs of their respective baseball cards (or baseballreference pages.). Shit is self-fulfilling.
It is worth noting that sports fandom is largely enjoyed as an irrational passion. Outside of cases of betting, I’m not sure anyone has an interest in being factually correct. It’s sort of like religion, except that nobody tries making laws about what random citizens can do with their pink bits on the basis of baseball stats or the curse of the bambino.
P.S. Other than the sports analogy, I think you have a good point.