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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: The Disrespect for Truth has Brought a New Dark Age In her historical mystery, The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey (a pen name of Elizabeth MacKintosh) has Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant, while confined to his hospital bed, solve the 15th century murder of the two York princes in the Tower of London. The princes were murdered by Henry VII, and the crime was blamed on Richard III in order to justify the upstart Tudor’s violent seizure of the English throne. Tey makes the point that if a 20th century mystery writer can detect the truth about a 15th century murder, historians have no excuse to persist in writing in school textbooks that Richard murdered his nephews. British historians remained loyal to the Tudor propaganda long after the Tudors were no longer around to be feared or served. At the beginning of the scientific era, men had the hope that the ability to discover truth would free mankind from superstition, dogma, and the service of power. The belief in truth was powerful. Truth would deliver justice and bring an end to status-based privileges and the falsehoods propagated by privilege. The faith in truth was short-lived. Today propaganda is everywhere in the ascendency. In the panoply of left-wing propaganda about Pinochet, it is nowhere mentioned that Allende was appointed president of Chile by the Chilean congress, which three years later called on Chile’s military to oust Allende for his totalitarian ways. Instead, Allende is portrayed as a "popularly elected president who was overthrown by a tyrant." Every week another apologist for President Bush compares "Bush’s fight for Iraqi freedom" to Abraham Lincoln’s "fight to free the slaves." The American civil war was not fought to "free the slaves," as Thomas DiLorenzo and other scholars have thoroughly documented, any more than the purpose of Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq was to "bring freedom to Iraqis." The freedom excuse was invented after it became impossible to maintain the fictions about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s connections to Osama bin Laden. Bush has yet to tell the real reason he invaded Iraq. In the US today, demonization and propaganda substitute for facts and analysis. Professors and journalists are quick to lend their names and voices to the untruths that rule our lives. Just as Hitler’s foreign policy was based in propaganda, so is Bush’s and Blair’s. The success of propaganda enhances government’s illusion that it has a monopoly on truth. It is the monopoly on truth that gives the Bush regime the right to define the "Iran problem," the "Syria problem," the "Lebanon problem," and the "Korea problem" and to apply coercion in place of understanding and negotiation. Secure in its possession of truth, the Bush administration refuses to talk to the enemies it has manufactured. It will only fight them. When scholars, such as John Walt and Stephen Mearsheimer, or President Jimmy Carter, who has tried harder than anyone else to achieve Arab-Israeli peace, point out that Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians is a cause of Middle East turmoil, they are immediately denounced as anti-Semites. Columnists and academics who know nothing about the Middle East or its troubles nevertheless know what they are supposed to say whenever anyone mentions Israel in any critical context. And they have no compunction about saying it, the truth be damned. Without commitment to truth, science, justice, and debate falter and disappear. The belief in truth is fading from our society. It is unclear that scientists themselves any longer believe in truth or the ability to discover it. The discovery of truth is no longer the purpose of our criminal justice system. Once prosecutors believed that it was better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent person to be wrongfully convicted. Today prosecutors believe in high conviction rates to justify their budgets and re-election. In the past police solved crimes. Today they round up suspects and pressure them. There was no debate in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, and none today in the US. Many Americans, who imagine themselves to be conservatives even though they have never read, nor could they identify, a conservative writer, equate truth-telling with hatred of America. They are of Bush’s mindset: "you are with us or against us." Bush supporters respond to factual articles about Iraq and the rending of the US Constitution by suggesting that as the writer hates America so much, he should move to Cuba or China. In America today each faction’s "truths" are defined by the faction’s dogma or ideology. Each faction bans factual analysis that it doesn’t want to hear. This is as true within the universities as it is at political rallies. The old liberal notion that "we shall follow the truth wherever it may lead" has long departed from America. Think tanks reflect the views of the donors. Studies are no longer independent of their financing. In America, truth has become partisan. All societies have elements of myth, untruths that nevertheless serve to unite a people. But many myths serve as camouflage for evil. One of the greatest myths is that "GIs have died for our freedom." GIs have died for American empire, for the American elite’s commitment to England, and for the military-industrial complex’s profits. Some may have died in Korea for the freedom of South Koreans, and some may have died trying to save South Vietnamese from the North Vietnamese communists. But it is hogwash that GIs died for our freedom. There was no prospect of North Korea attacking America in the 1950s or Vietnam attacking America in the 1960s and none today. The Nazis were defeated by Russia before US troops landed in Europe. The US never faced any threat of invasion from Germany, Italy, or Japan. America’s wars have created hysteria that endangers our freedom. Abraham Lincoln shut down the freedom of the press and arrested editors and state legislators. Woodrow Wilson arrested war critics. Franklin Roosevelt interred American citizens of Japanese descent. George W. Bush has destroyed most of the Bill of Rights. In 2006 Congress appropriated funds for building concentration camps in the US. Recently, Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, said that freedom of speech is inconsistent with "the war on terror." If it takes a police state to fight terror, the country is lost even if Muslim terrorists are defeated. Americans have far more to fear from a homeland police state than from terrorists. The vast majority of the world’s terrorists are the recent creations of Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and brutality toward the Palestinians. Bush is simultaneously creating terrorists and a police state. It serves no one but the police to make their power unaccountable. On December 26 Jeff Cohen explained on Truthout how war propaganda took over TV news and demonized everyone who spoke the truth about Iraq, while pushing war fever to a frenzy. Fox "News" was the worst with its ranks of generals and colonels who sold their integrity for dollars and TV exposure. One of Fox’s loudest voices for war was a retired general who sat on the board of a military contractor. When the Clinton administration allowed the media concentration in the 1990s, the independence of the American media was destroyed. Today there are a few large conglomerates whose values depend on broadcast licenses from the government. The conglomerates are run by corporate executives who are not journalists and whose eyes are on advertising revenues. They publish and broadcast what is safe. These conglomerates will take no risks in behalf of free speech or truth. The challenges that America faces are not terrorism and oil supply. The challenges that we face are the police state that Bush has created and the disrespect for truth that is endemic in government, the universities, and the media. The US has entered a dark age of dogmas and unaccountable power.
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#8. To: Fibr Dog (#0)
I have to congratulate the DC oligarchy on its masterful control of the reichwing rank and file in this country. The templates to control the "left" in this country have long been in place and they make most of the "left" worthless in real criticism of the Feds. The "left" fancies itself to be the smarter of the two "isms" in this country and more nuanced than the "right" but they are so firmly statist that they react to real criticism of the Feds with even more horror than the reichwing. But the control of the right wing is simply amazing. Here was a movement that was puportedly "anti government". That supposedly was for "small government". At least their rank and file have held those attitudes. Of the two fraud "isms" in this country the right wing has always been the one of more concern to our DC Oligarchs. So it is all the more remarkable that the right wing has been turned into the Reichwing- a movement that unquestioningly supports the federal government, worships its military, drools over the police, and actually labels those who would seek to limit its power or question its motives as "left wing". How did it happen? First- a long and concsience effort to equate military whorship and militarism with being "conservative". Since the "left" oppossed the Vietnam war- it is now "conservative" to support all wars every time and to genuflect before anyone in a military uniform. Thus- right off the bat entire areas of thought are off limits to them as being "leftist". Second- the "Liberal Media" template has been so abused and expanded that literally anything that doesn't come from a reichwinger propaganda outlet is now suspect or immediately dismissed as "liberal" lies or "bias". It is at the point where reporting the bare facts of occurences in Iraq is now "liberal bias" and even "treason" to the members of the Reichwing. They simply reject, out of hand, the vast majority of media and only believe or trust their own highly ideological sources. Third- the dumbing down of the conservative punditocracy. The purges of the early 90's sent a clear message on what was to be expected of a reiching pundit- stupid cheap populism, rank military cheerleading, unquestioning support for the Federal government and the equating of support for it with "Patriotism". Russel Kirk and Joe Sobran? Gone. Replaced with? Sean Hannity and Jonah Goldberg. All traces of the great conservative thinkers are no where recognizable among the ranks of the new fascist reichwing pundits. The "intellectuals" of this reichwing are cheap polemicists and propagandists- mud slingers- know nothings with bow ties. Thus we have a reichwing that simply doesn't even inhabit the same reality as everyone else. It varies in severity- but the differences in reality perception among the reichwing is astounding. One can easily find members who believe that the WMD have been found- but the "liberal media" is hiding this from us. That OBL and Saddam plotted and carried out 9/11 - but the "Liberal media" is hiding this from us as well. That Iraq is at virtual peace but for some minor violence that is less than detroit and its economy is booming and prospering and they are "free" but again- the "liberal media" is hiding this too. When basic facts are not even acknowledged among people- when two alternate realities exist- and you have a media that treats every opinion, no matter how clearly false or deranged with respect and refuses to distinguish between fact and fiction- you are heading for dangerous and violent times domestically. The left is controlled with similiar methods and means. But they are more nuanced and would take some explaining.
When basic facts are not even acknowledged among people- when two alternate realities exist- and you have a media that treats every opinion, no matter how clearly false or deranged with respect and refuses to distinguish between fact and fiction- you are heading for dangerous and violent times domestically. The left is controlled with similiar methods and means. But they are more nuanced and would take some explaining. The NeoCommies have successfully destroyed the GOP. It stands for nothing I recognize. Another day, do attempt to explain the left.
Ergo, the strong appeal to the "religious" right. When trying to sell fiction as fact, there is no more fertile soil. Just frame everything in terms of good vs evil and the true believers will pound the drums of hate and war for you. No one more easily manipulated then a zealot defending his god against someone else's god. Richard W.
They really tapped into a limitless (but shallow) resource in that unholy alliance.
#13. To: robin (#11)
-- Police State
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