Being Played

This is the first thing to read if you want to understand the Paris massacre yesterday.

http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html

I would have wished for much much better coverage by MSNBC at least. Chris Matthews' hand-wringing was close to O'Reilly's stock and trade emotionalism, so thank heavens the boycott by Fox News continues. Meanwhile, the American Right is pounding it's fist against the efforts to rein in the CIA and NSA, and this and every atrocity are its tools.

You'd think that the very well known history of this sort of tactic would be of at least minimum interest. The story of the Stalinist rise to power is recent in historical terms, and very instructive. The United States and much of Europe was played by the 9/11 attacks as well. A decade plus later and the ground in Iraq has been prepared for ISIS--by us!

There is this very sensible historical analysis from Charlie Pierce as well:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Death_In_Paris?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_128168589

Given that we have so many and frequent examples of unscrupulous fear-mongering to choose from, you'd hope at some point we'd learn something about how and what to react to when something like the Paris atrocity occurs.