Common Sense & Politic's

Maybe the two don't mix, but I want to talk about common sense and politics. The Dixie Chicks won multiple awards for their music at the Grammy Presentations. Please forget for the moment that I don't believe in these Award shows, (see my blog about the "Oscars"). Let's concentrate on what many people thought this award represented. Commentators thought that it meant that at least the people in the music business had come around on the issue of the groups well known comments on the War in Iraq.

A few years ago while on European tour, Natalie Maines, the groups lead singer remarked from the stage that she was ashamed to be from Texas, because of the actions of President Bush regarding the invasion of Iraq. A firestorm of public criticism and a commercial boycott resulted. At least in the country music world, the once darlings of the genre, were verboten. Yet on this night, just a few years later, there are accolades and applause raining down on them as they accepted their awards. What changed?

Talent aside, certainly a strong component has to be that public opinion about the War in Iraq has changed. The balance of public opinion often moves like a landslide with a slow almost imperceptible roll of pebbles building to the roaring rockslide that tears down the slope. I believe public opinion on the war has moved partially by the "Groundhog Day " like reports of body counts and insurgent attacks that makes us seem helpless against the enemy and the misleading reports and hollow feel good rhetoric of our leaders that began to ring hollow and false.

I remember seeing Joan Baez in concert after the fall of the Berlin wall. While the conservatives were crowing about our great victory over the Soviet Union, Joan, the antiwar poster child for the left, put it into perspective. The Soviet Union didn’t fail because of anything we did. It failed because of its own weakness and inability to govern it's people fairly and honestly. The Soviet Union was and always had been a paper tiger. Its power was like the Wizard of Oz was in its ability to prevent us from looking behind the, in this case, iron curtain to view reality and to appear strong. However, the myth served certain interests in our county very well. The myth of the common enemy is a tremendous unifying fulcrum.

It's a true thing that given a common enemy more frightening than any of our other differences, a society can suspend conflict to fight that enemy. Today that concept is being challenged. Maybe Lucy has pulled the football away so many times that Charley Brown won't believe her no matter how sincere she becomes. People realize albeit a little late that fighting the real enemy in the wholly mislabeled “War on Terror” that the US hasn't done itself any good by invading Iraq.

What is served by this digression is more than likely important to understand if we are to make sense of something that seems designed not to make sense. But the whole cloth of wool that is being pulled over our eyes seems to be too loose of a weave for some light not to penetrate. People just can't be fooled forever and the timeline for the life of a myth is getting shorter, mostly because of the flood of information that is available. Not only the internet and print media but cable and local television are providing more information. Despite the claims of bias, that may be true from outlet to outlet, the overall effect of competition in the media industry presents people with a wide range of opinion on almost any issue.

While it, may be true that people gravitate to the opinions that they agree with, but I think that's true of only some. Most people can, do and will change their opinion. Why do they do it? If you believe in the "Wisdom of Crowds" and the theories of open or wiki operations, giving people more information and more time, common sense or majority opinion will prevail. I would postulate that public opinion on the war has come around from the Dixie Chicks being banished from country music stations to the darlings of the Grammy’s because we were able to look behind the curtain and we realize the truth.