poputonian at Hullabaloo expands on Olberman's discussion of lies and writes about the worst damage the Company has done to the nation:
One of the things that bothers me about neo-Republicanism and its entire foundation of lies, is the division it has created within families. I can hardly speak to my wingnut brother anymore, and we can't speak at all about politics. We had numerous heated debates in the first couple of years following the invasion of Iraq, but he would counter every sourceable evidence I put forward with a lie he had been fed by Fox News, Rush Phlegmball, or The President -- people who really have no honor whatsoever.
When I informed an uncle (in his sixties) about PNAC as evidence of pre-meditation of the war in Iraq, he asked me with complete and genuine concern if I had been getting information from the Internet, as if the Internet was a big tub of lies, with no sources to back up any assertion. His source of information about Iraq? He admitted it: newspaper editorials and the aforementioned Mr. Phlegmball.
It seems every political debate conducted in the family setting ends in emotional turmoil. If you're serious about the politics of death and dying, your own flesh and blood are the ones you most want to convince of how wrong and dishonorable the current administration is. But convincing the last thirty percent of deeply entrenched wingnuts, even if they're family, isn't going to happen given that the current Republican leadership is the most dishonorable lot of American politicians ever. They have institutionalized and legitimated the art of lying to where it is now an officially accepted practice. I really think they see lying as an important part of the political gamesmanship, the country be damned.
With a population close to 300 million, and Dear Leader's Faithful hovering at about a third of us, you get the idea of the size of the problem. One third of the nation is accusing the other two thirds of Treason. The other two thirds is at best, puzzled and hurt. At worst?
What did Olberman say? Quoted over at Hullabaloo, expanded here a little more for context, you should really check out the whole transcript and watch the video:
Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona Congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, 177 of the opposition party said 'You know, we don't think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists."
The hell they did.
177 Democrats opposed the President's seizure of another part of the Constitution.
Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn't be listening to the conversations of terrorists.
President Bush hears… what he wants.
Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said "Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we're attacked again before we respond."
Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.
And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind-reader.
"If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party," the President said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, "it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is — wait until we're attacked again."
The President doesn't just hear what he wants. He hears things, that only he can hear...
Rhetorically, it is about an inch short of Mr. Bush accusing Democratic leaders; Democrats; the majority of Americans who disagree with his policies — of treason... Read it all. Olberman's hit it precisely.
Pundits like Coulter, Limbaugh, and Savage have long accused Dear Leader's opponents of treason. Lately that's expanded to Fox News, too, as they thrash and desperately try to energize their waning audience. Still, that 30% remains Faithful.
As one of the many Americans with a great deal of family- all of my blood outside of my wife and kids, really- taking the word of Dear Leader as the Word of God, you might say this issue concerns me deeply.
But this issue isn't new. A young John Adams, himself a devout Christian, eleven years before the Revolutionary War, observed the marriage of theocratic and feudal interests, and commented on how they maintain control of minds:
..."All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge..."
It's in old English, and hard to read, but worth it, because the same human issues
continue to plague us today. They've had many guises, slogans and labels,over the years, but the antagonists of freedom have been very similar in their aims and mode of action over the years.
The taste of Kool-Aid isn't nutritious. The great problem of those who would rule instead of govern is that they have a hard time keeping the trains running on time, all their promises to the contrary. As I've posted here over the years, there are major forces acting against the status quo.
These forces won't bring families together in a very pleasant way at all.
You can bet the state of sordid staring purposeful ignorance of that third of us will make a muddle of the decisions that have to be made.
Perhaps, though, as the Founders intended, we'll be less likely to follow the cults of personality that those who would rule engender.
Just don't count on it.
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