Short History

When Ra^thergate first broke, Beldar offered, generously:

Either in logic or in law, the burden is squarely on CBS News to respond to those arguments — and to do so immediately. So far, there's no credible suggestion that CBS News has been actively complicit in forgery...

I didn't agree completely, and frankly said so, asking "CBS Not Complicit?"

Technically, that's true: they've not been shown complicit in the forgery itself.

But as an ordinary guy on the street, I beg to differ when it comes to the overall picture: When journalists as a whole are willing to sit on the SwiftVets story for nearly two weeks, look aggressively for every single hole in the story, do background investigations on various swiftboat veterans pets -- then you bet they're complicit when they take a package of documents like this and run with it, on national TV, immediately!, without taking even the slightest interest in checking veracity.

In restrospect it's possible that I may been right for all the wrong reasons, but Beldar, kind prince that he is, commented almost immediately, saying he was, indeed, perhaps having second thoughts based on what many were saying.

The recent relevation of Emily Will's warning to CBS has apparently clinched it for him:

Dan Rather was complicit in defrauding the American public in an attempt to defeat a sitting President. Rather must be fired now. Congress should subpoena CBS News' lawyers and all documentation of their advice....

He who knowingly enables and facilitates the fraud is as guilty as he who originated it.

It doesn't matter whether CBS News had other experts who supported the documents' authenticity. If there were such experts, they were wrong. CBS News and Dan Rather proceeded deliberately in the face of explicit warnings from Ms. James and Ms. Will.

And now, disappointed in the benefit of the doubt he extended, he responds as only the righteous can: With earnest, thunderous indignation and calls for serious measures such as the likes of me would fail to contemplate, much less even hope for.

Understanding Motivations

I personally see this whole episode as a wake-up call to ordinary folks regarding the dangers of relativism and of leftism. What Rather did was not some fluke caused by too many years in the field. It is a completely logical consequence of a philosophy.

Why did Bill give CBS the benefit of the doubt? Why is he shocked (shocked, I say) now? He's a "crusty old trail lawyer" who probably knows more about, and has spent a lot more time with people than me, an engineer in my thirties.

In observing this short vignette, there's a little word I'd like to introduce into the discussion: "projection". And forgive me, but I can't help but quote:

To the pure, everything is pure. But to those who are corrupted... nothing is pure. In fact both their minds and consciences are corrupted.

I don't know Bill any better than he knows me. But from what I can grasp, he seems to be, as O'Reilly would probably put it, a "stand-up kinda guy", a guy who believes in certain absolutist notions of right and wrong, fixed, consistent standards for judgement, and old fashioned notions like being innocent until proven guilty.

And I'm guessing Bill tends to credit "the other guy" with being like him in this regard, operating the same way, according to the same rules.

But we're not dealing with ordinary people here. We're dealing with hard-core leftists, operating in their element.

Now, before everyone gets their panties in a bunch, I'm not saying leftists are the devil incarnate. Many of them are friendly, generous, and generally decent people who, if you keep politics out of the picture, will do any number of kind, generous, and noble deeds.

But when politics (or religion) enters the picture, things, as we engineers would say, "go nonlinear."

Understanding Leftism

Like many journalists, Rather is, as best I can see, a postmodern leftist.

Postmodern leftists don't see the world the way Bill does. It is my experience that they don't tend to belive in fixed, absolutist notions of right and wrong, but tend to judge relativisiticly. The necessary, logical consequence of relativism is that instead of battling over abstract ideas -- aruging matters of fact using fixed rules -- every idea is instantly as "true" as every other, and the only thing left to decide ideological dominance is raw, naked power.

The long and short of this is that relativists must inevitably see the world in terms of a power struggle between competing narratives, with ideas and standards only being tools to use, or not use, as needed in that struggle.

This is confusing for the rest of us, because they sound like us when they speak, using terms such as "right" and "wrong", and "lies" and "deceit", words that all seem to imply absolutist notions to us. But they don't mean these words in the same way we do: "Right" and "wrong" for example, are simply more powerful word-weapons which carry the underlying meaning "I favor" and "I disfavor."

This is how Kerry can say unflincingly (and deceitfully, to us) that the Republican convention was "full of deceit" -- he means it was full of unflattering portrayals, not that there was any factual rightness or wrongness about it. He doesn't think in such terms.

Similarly, this is how Rather can be seem so utterly clueless to us, standing there, clutching his discredited memos, and saying: "But Bush isn't answering the charges!"

I believe Rather, in his own eyes, views himself as a beknighted champion of a narrative which favors the disenfranchised and downtrodden. Bush then is not a man who holds to fixed principles with which he happens to disagree, but rather represents the competiting narrative of power for the privileged and elite. Matters of "fact" are only relevant as to how they are conscripted into this struggle: "true" are those which advance it, "false" are those which retard it.

This is why Rather believes in "the greater truth" behind the memos, and seems unphased by the fact they've been discredited. This setback is more of a tactical misstep than the betrayal of "the truth" we see it as being.

Unsuprisingly, other journalists see it the same way -- facts are less important than tactics:

Whatever the truth, CBS' real error was trying to prove a point that didn't need to be proved. It doesn't take documents for anyone to realize that Bush pulled strings to get into the National Guard...

The brouhaha all but managed to place Bush's Vietnam-era service off-limits as a campaign issue, after weeks in which John F. Kerry's impressive record has been under savage attack.

And an important point to grasp is that, like all relativists, Rather believes his opponents function exactly the same way he does. He doesn't really believe we "conservative bloggers" are first people concerned about the truth, and second, conservatives. Instead, he believes we are no different than himself: Partisan operatives battling for a narrative, unconcerned about truth or matters of fact beyond that which is temporarily convenient to our cause.

Only we are, in his eyes, backing the wrong, oppressive, cause.

Believe me, he has a good conscience about all this. He undoubtedly does not view himself as "deceitful" in the slightest. How can he? He's on the side of the angels.

Prognosis

Bill recommends drastic but sensible measures:

CBS, through its affiliates' licenses to use broadcast frequencies that belong to the public, is a repository of the public trust....

If Dan Rather is still an employee of CBS News by next Monday, then the appropriate committees of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate should convene public joint investigative hearings immediately, with Dan Rather as their second subpoenaed witness.

The first witness must be an appropriate custodian of records from CBS News, who must be directed to bring every shred of paper, every email, every piece of videotape, every computer file, every outtake, every script, every memorandum of staff meetings — and every bit of advice rendered by inside or outside legal counsel to CBS News prior to the broadcast. There is no attorney-client privilege to shield advice rendered to assist a client in the perpetration of a crime or a fraud.

As I said, this is drastic but sensible.

And once again, I must oppose it.

This is a fine course to follow, if we feel like handing John Kerry the presidency. Bill sees having some kind of redress or consequence -- rightly, I might add -- as necessary to the functioning of a free and open society. This kind of consumer fraud would certainly not be permitted in any industry -- why should the press get away with it?

Unfortunately, it will be, again, portrayed as simply another power-play, simply another way those Republican and their "operatives" -- Bill must understand he will be seen this way -- are getting "revenge". Believe me, I watched this kind of drama play out between Gingritch and Clinton. It's not going to be any different this time: conservatives won a few short-term battles, but the media was able to forge such actions into a negative view of conservatives which effectively handed Clinton an 8-year presidency.

The same can be said of the FCC's actions against Viacom for the "wardrobe malfunction", which, it looks to me, have a similar underlying rationale of misuing the airwaves, a public trust.

This is a tough game to play, and even tougher when you have ethics you have to stick to. But I see nothing in my set of ethics which compels me to seek a government-sponsored solution to this, though it's certainly a legitimate option.

I tend to favor bringing market forces to bear for the same end. To that ends, I hope many of us call or e-mail our local CBS affiliates and give them flack.

Furthermore, as a conservative, I theoretically distrust the power of government to get things done. Why would I think this hypothetical comittee wouldn't devolve into an ineffective dog-and-pony show like the 9/11 committee?

Believe me, Bill, you're right and in a perfect world, I'd favor your solution. But in the end I fear it won't work: It'll help Kerry get into office, and, if he's there, you can bet any investigation would come to a rapid, screetching halt.

But anyone is welcomed to disagree with me here, if you've got more thoughts on the matter...