Spin, bullshit and credibility

Zenpundit has a great paragraph on the international and security costs of political, bi-partisan kabuki theatre:

Our national leaders, broadly speaking, carry no such weight on the strategic level, neither at home nor abroad. Regardless of their position on the war, most politicians appear to be disconnected economically and socially from the lives of ordinary Americans, much less foreign audiences - unless they are foreign elites who were educated in American Ivy League schools. “Spin” has become so habitual and baldfaced lying, denial of reality and lawyerly semantics so commonplace a tactic in American politics, that our words no longer carry any credibility, just our actions. When our actions then contradict our values as well, the game is over.

We are engaged politically in a game of denial, obstufucation and fainting attacks whenever anyone actually calls bullshit on the current rule set of internal elite political discourse, and it has serious costs past the creation of hordes of bloggers who could no longer afford to replace the television broken after throwing the remote at the screen as more bullshit is passed off with a smile.

Garbage in, garbage out until there is a barge to nowhere floating along the currents of incredibility...