In September, Pakistan entered into an agreement with North Waziristan (part of Pakistan), which a few commentators such as I characterized as our ally, Pakistan negotiating a separate peace with (and effectively a surrender to) our joint enemies, the Taliban and al Qaeda. Other news organizations reported the event, but did not characterize it as I did. Was this event a central and dangerous development in our war in Afghanistan (the evidence grows to support my analysis), or was it merely an internal administrative Pakistani matter of little consequence?
Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi has announced that on the evening of Jan. 4, it will cost you $15,000 to celebrate her ascension to the speaker's chair with her. She has also announced that on the morning of Jan. 5, you can meet her in "The People's House" for free. Depending on which of those items passes into the consciousness of people next month, they might think she is either a Democrat or a plutocrat. Or they may be so confused by the conflicting images of the same person that come at them from one nanosecond to the other that they give up on trying to understand the world and mentally retreat into their own private lives. Of course, it is not just Pelosi's conflicting images, but the images of every political fact and event that is coming at people.
How different, functionally, is the man or woman of 2006 who mentally checks out from the chaos of the world's events and news to that European villager of 1400 who isn't sure who his king is, what he looks like, or what he is doing?
Well, one difference is that today, the people -- whether ignorant or informed, whether wise or foolish -- can strongly influence the state actions of their country. In the 14th Century, kings and princes were free to act unhindered by a public opinion that didn't exist -- although the contingency of riots, rebellions, and revolutions usually hovered at the back of kingly minds.
Of course the sovereignty of the people has -- and I hope will continue to be -- the benefactor of their happiness and dignity. But in the technologically driven growing chaos of public information overload and distortion, the leader must -- by force of mind, word, image and personality -- define for the public some semblance of objective reality. As never before, the leader who fails in that mission will fail in his office.
And rule by the people, itself, is threatened if the people are unable to gain a plausible grip on reality. The threat to democracy in the future will be less from above, than from our mind-numbed selves.
Tony Blankley
Tony Blankley, a conservative author and commentator who served as press secretary to Newt Gingrich during the 1990s, when Republicans took control of Congress, died Sunday January 8, 2012. He was 63.
Blankley, who had been suffering from stomach cancer, died Saturday night at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, his wife, Lynda Davis, said Sunday.
In his long career as a political operative and pundit, his most visible role was as a spokesman for and adviser to Gingrich from 1990 to 1997. Gingrich became House Speaker when Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 1994 midterm elections.
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