In his No Utopia, Jim Culleny does his take on Paul Krugman’s piece on “Matter of Emphasis.”
A good place to start: look up “deceit” in the dictionary and you’ll find the picture of a right-wing Republican apologist in front of a backdrop of logos of major TV news corporations. Then look up “seducible” and you’ll find a group photo of 70% of the U.S. population. If we could only get it into our heads that once a government knows it can get away with creating lies to hype a “good” cause it’s only a matter of time before it cranks up its lie-making machine to hype any cause.
Owning to the tenor of the times and the effects of two great mishaps (the 2000 election and 9/11), in practical terms, whatever “is” was before the truth became a sound bite– will be a mystery wrapped in an enigma cloaked in a photo-op of the president getting tail-hooked onto an aircraft carrier wearing big goggles and a top-gun suit, then being greeted by a sea of cheering troops, and finally giving a speech about how the war is …sort-of… over. It was a moment made for TV, literally.
And this quote on No Utopia deserves repeating:
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president,or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile,but it is morally treasonable to the American public.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
And so does this:THE CONSTITUTION …have you ever read it?