Laura Secor wrote an article under the title: “Iran 's
Protesters Want One Thing: Accountability,” published on January 7, 2018 in the
New York Times. Given that she has had an interest in Iranian issues for a long
time, and that she wrote about it extensively, she has the legitimate right to
claim being an expert on Iran .
The interesting part about her article is not that she wrote
it or what she says in it; the interesting part is the date of the article's
publication. It was January 7, which is 5 days later than most of the articles
written on the same subject. It is important to mention this fact because
intellectual honesty is what lies at the basis of journalistic integrity. And
one way to measure that integrity is to find out how the journalists are
sourcing their work – be it the narration of factual stories or the expression
of opinions.
You see my friend, for a common wisdom to be intellectually
honest it must follow the natural path a concept must take to develop. In
journalism, this means the work must start with the authentic experts laying
down the background for the debate that will follow. When this is done, the
various commentators that may have a peripheral interest in the subject, jump
into the fray and show how this ties-in with the other subjects. In most part,
these would be the subjects with which each commentator is usually associated.
But when the cart is placed before the horse – so to speak –
whereby the authentic expert is seen to follow the non-experts, you are alerted
to the fact that something isn't kosher in this process. So, you dig into the
affair and discover that the non-experts are members of a mob serving an echo
chamber that's continually being fed with the false information and the
self-serving opinions of a behind-the-scenes manipulator.
And that's what happened with the January 7, 2018
publication of Laura Secor's article. To illustrate this sad reality, 3 other
pieces of work were picked for comparison, all published on January 2, 2018.
What follows is how the author of “Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the
Soul of Iran” – a book published in February 2016 – began her latest article so
as to harmonize with today's common wisdom. This would be the attempt to
establish that the current discontent in Iran is directed at the regime more
than it is a complaint about rising prices. With her latest article, Secor goes
along to get along, and seeks to explain why her current work differs from the
way she used to write about Iran .
Here is how she accomplished all that:
“Iranians complain about the economy. They always have. I
heard these complaints every time I visited Iran between 2004 and 2012.
Economists told me: people complain because they complain. But the numbers
aren't all that bad. I never found this assurance very satisfying. Iranians
complain about their political system too. Iran is an uncomfortable country
and the impulse to separate the economic from the political risks missing the
point”.
With this, Laura Secor put her readers on the same wavelength
as Dennis Ross who wrote: “Iranians Are Mad as Hell About Their Foreign
Policy,” an article that appeared on January 2, 2018 in Foreign Policy. Here is
Ross's main point:
“What should the United States do? In 2009, I was
serving in Obama's administration. Because we feared playing into the hands of
the Iranian regime, we adopted a low-key posture. In retrospect, that was a
mistake. The lesson I draw from 2009 is that the United States should not be
silent”.
And then there was the editorial of the New York Daily News
which appeared on the same day under the title: “Stand with Iran 's people”
and the subtitle: “Trump is right to support protesters; the world should join
him,” in which the editors made the following points:
“Iranians are standing up against a regime that suffocates
their freedoms. All Americans should stand with women and men who seek to steer
their nation toward a more democratic future. America must support them. When
protests erupted in 2009 Obama Hemmed and hawed. He then brokered a deal
relaxing sanctions in exchange for the regime's promise to curb its nuclear
program. Autocratic governments do not reform, which means things will get
worse for those who cry out. But if the people keep it up, and if the world [America ] backs their aspirations, an Iran that makes
less mischief may come into sharper focus”.
And finally, there was the editorial of National Review
Online which appeared under the title: “Support the protests in Iran ,” in which
the editors made the following points:
“Protests have erupted across Iran . The citizens are challenging
the theocracy that rules over them. The United States government should
support the protests against the tyranny of this regime. To the extent that we
can, we should work to tilt the scales against it. Accordingly, we should take
robust diplomatic actions. We should undertake covert actions to undermine the
regime. We should identify viable factions and provide assistance to them. We
commend these protesters and hope the United States does everything it can to
help them”.
When the fake experts take the lead, and the real experts
are made to follow them, you know it is becoming clearer by the day that Jewish
America is steadily morphing into an Orwellian kind of Wonderland where reality
is turned upside-down, and left for the animals to oversee.
That would be the politico-journalistic establishment that's
dragging the rest of the country into an abyss never visited before. It does so
ironically with the use of the separation of powers established by the U.S.
Constitution precisely to prevent such a thing from happening.