Mike Pompeo and the Imperial State Department
Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2018 8:28 pm
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Sorry to keep quoting Res Ipsa's signature line, but I find it increasingly important.
The country's biggest enemy is not terrorism, or Russian interference in our elections, or Korean nuclear missiles. It is our own news media. Keep in mind the term 'fake news' was originally used to describe deliberately made-up stories designed as click-bait from Eastern Europe. The President of the United States has co-opted a term that was meant to alert Americans to the threat of foreign influence in our news media, to attack the very media that informed us of the threat in the first place.
Once you have denigrated the media, it becomes a lot easier for your minions to haughtily reject legitimate questions. A bit of background. Before the summit, the State Department used the acronym CVID (Complete Verifiable Irreversible DeNuclearization) to describe State Department policy with respect to North Korea. After the summit agreement was released, reporters had some questions for Secretary Pompeo:
State Department Transcript wrote:QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, I wanted to ask you about “verifiable and irreversible.”
SECRETARY POMPEO: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: You said – the day before you said it’s our only objective, our – it’s clear we want that. It’s not in the statement. Why it’s not in the statement? And the President said it will —
SECRETARY POMPEO: Mm-hmm, it’s in the statement. It’s in the statement. You’re just wrong about that.
QUESTION: How is it in the statement? And I am also —
SECRETARY POMPEO: You’re just – because “complete” encompasses verifiable and irreversible. It just – I suppose we – you could argue semantics, but let me assure you that it’s in the document.
QUESTION: And the President said it will be verified.
SECRETARY POMPEO: Of course it will.
QUESTION: Can you tell us a little bit more about —
SECRETARY POMPEO: Of course it will. I mean —
QUESTION: — what is – what discussed about how?
SECRETARY POMPEO: Just so you know, you could ask me this – I find that question insulting and ridiculous and, frankly, ludicrous. I just have to be honest with you. It’s a game and one ought not play games with serious matters like this.
Got it? A reporter asked exactly how a document that does not use the words verifiable and irreversible could be used to ensure those conditions occurred. Pompeo is insulted by what he considers to be a ridiculous and ludicrous question.
WORDS! MEANINGS! RIDICULOUS! LUDICROUS! OF ALL THE NERVE! HARUMPH! HARUMPH!
Excuse me for not sharing Pompeo's sense of outrage that a reporter asked a legitimate question. But I think this is what the Trump administration wants: the ability to browbeat the media so constantly that his supporters are fearful of anything they read from 'the other side'. The hope is that eventually the public will become accustomed to the new normal of Administration officials taking offense at legitimate questions from the media.