The Turn

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called 'The Pledge'. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called 'The Turn'. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call 'The Prestige.'"
-- Cutter, "The Prestige"

The media has been awfully quiet on Iraq lately, with the exception of the diplomacy taking place between Iraq and Turkey over the PKK terrorists (they're not "rebels" just because they're Kurds, dammit). Talk of violence trends in the major media outlets is close to nonexistent. The Nation waxes nostalgic about the last time it had something right (2003) and how nobody appreciates depressing leftist books anymore. And as the blood that brings in the money for anti-war media outlets stops flowing, they turn their attention to the money that's been stopping the blood. Perhaps to phrase this more diplomatically, they're simply playing their strong suit. Which isn't death and mayhem anymore.

They need something to scare people into believing them. Declining casualties isn't scary, but 2.7 Trillion for two wars in progress is, even if the money provides the armor, weapons, aid, and operational tempo that are yielding the results. but they don't tell you that second part.

So is the coercive diplomacy being exercised against Iran, when one ignores how breathtakingly dumb a strike against Iran would be. But they don't mention that second part.

Another scary thing is a Turkish invasion of Iraq that is extremely unlikely to happen, as neither country has anything to gain from an escalation. But they don't mention that second part.

When and where things are going well for the American effort in Iraq, they are also going well for the Iraqis. When this happens, the press tries to make it disappear. They entertain you with something else until they can bring it back. That's what you're witnessing now: the turn. They're showing you something else, heavily modified, to distract you from the trick they're playing on you.

All things considered, the people who parrot these tricks don't remind me of any particular magician. But they do bring another interesting person to mind.

"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority."
-- Stanley Milgram