Another Perspective On The Anthrax Case

UPDATE: I've got to admit, this is one of my more speculative posts, but it's pretty odd that in such a high-profile case, they would have pretty much wrapped it up but never told us about it. For all any members of the public knew for a long time now, this guy could have still been out there, about to start attacking people with anthrax again and more successfully. The FBI knew otherwise but kept us totally in the dark.

When we first heard about the new developments in the anthrax attacks case a few days ago, I wondered why we hadn't heard about it before and why we were hearing about it now. I only came up with a partial answer (I didn't have a theory as to why we are finding out about it now). As you may know, since the media is so corrupt and so pro-Republican, I am always looking for ways news stories may fit in with the Republicans' messages about what is going on at any given time. But today, I saw a newspaper story about the anthrax attacks, and it got my mind rolling to an answer.

The story in the paper said that DNA linked the guy who they are now saying committed the attacks to the attacks. So, in the eyes of the public (who don't know anything about how accurate DNA tests are and consider them more or less fool-proof) it's now been proven that this guy was responsible. As far as how that could help Republican propaganda spin, one thing liberals have often retorted with when Republicans claimed there hadn't been a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11 (implicitly giving Bush and his decisions the credit for this) was the anthrax attacks. So, (1) being known to have solved the case makes the Republicans and the national security agencies look less inept leading up to a Presidential election and (2) having it turn out not to be Al Qaeda or any Muslim terrorists at all also probably tends to make whatever complaints the public may have with the prior lack of success in the case seem to carry less import. As for why it wasn't released earlier-- see my earlier post on the subject. The FBI or the administration maybe just didn't want it to look like some scuzzy, high-profile terrorist could escape American justice in the new, Republican, almost-perfect post-9/11 world. But, now they feel pressed to get McCain some kind of advantage, so they're changing their minds about how it would make Republicans look-- they're basically pulling out all the stops to find something that might budge the public relations situation around a bit. It's a close call as to whether it helps or hurts the Republicans' image, but you don't have to agree with their judgment (that is, their judgment that it might be a smart move for them to let this detail come out now) in order to be convinced that the Republicans manipulate a lot of the media. And we already have a lot of proof that the Republicans actively influence many parts of the government to get them to withhold certain information from the public, or to release information in a certain edited form. It may just be that the Republicans are more successful at getting the FBI to obey these orders than they are with some of the other federal agencies.

All I argue about the corruption of the mainstream media is that it's real, and that if you think Republicans aren't smart enough to think up trying something like that, you're wrong. I don't argue that their judgment as to what helps them is always the best, and indeed I occasionally identify things that I think come from them but are sort of stupid moves for them. For instance I think they pretty frequently try to encourage infighting among liberals or to make us look like fools (for instance, leaving a "bait" story to try to get us all to start breathing fire, but planning to release an additional detail about the story a few days later that will prove any of us who did so to have jumped the gun-- these instances aren't that memorable, because liberals do not in fact jump to the crazy conclusions and start a firestorm of denunciations on the scale the Republicans are hoping for-- instead they just kind of speculate a little bit), but that those attempts don't usually work because the Republicans don't understand quite well enough how we think. This may all sound like a lot to believe in, but all these conclusions in particular cases are based on the same kind of reasoning and details I've relied on to reach my conclusions in my recent posts. So, if you think those posts are convincing, you'd probably think these other instances were convincing if I'd explained them to you as well.

Some liberals have a hard time accepting stuff like this, and I think it's because it's hard to accept that the Republicans have "gotten" us so bad (by taking over so many important institutions) and that the Republicans, who tend to be a little stupider than us (but certainly only a little) could be fooling us like this. My best answer to that is that the Republicans had a very long time to see that things they didn't like, like desegregation and gay marriage, were on the way. They could see that the demographics were changing and that the country would inevitably not be majority-white anymore. So to think that they would just sit on their hands is like calling them Thag the Caveman, and that is not what they are at all. They are dumb enough to have bad morality, but not dumb enough to not be able to think of a lot of clever ways to protect their bigoted interests. So they started planning things and working on things. This is the same as the plutocrats have done. If liberals were so smart that they could easily defeat the plutocrats, we'd have figured out a way that organized labor could be a lot stronger in this country by now. But it just isn't so. Instead, the situation is the reverse-- organized labor has become very weak. This is because the conservatives, while not being as smart as us, are smart enough to be able to use what they have to effectively fight for their interests against us. Liberals, on the other hand, from a failure to assess all aspects of the situation (i.e., where they stand politically and in terms of power and in terms of strength of motivation relative to the conservatives) correctly, have in turn failed to use their superior minds in a way that allowed them to gain an advantage.

UPDATE: I'm not claiming, by the way, that DNA tests aren't usually very informative when performed correctly or that the test was a fake. For all I know, the test could have conclusively linked the guy to the attacks, or the connection between the guy and the attack could be a 100% Republican hoax. My only point to make with the above post was to point out how the Republicans could be timing the release of the information to try to help their interests. Anybody has got to agree with me, since this case has gone on forever, it's kind of odd that we didn't hear about this suspect much earlier! That's why it's natural to speculate about this kind of thing.