Sunday, March 14, 2010

From the Bushite right: Lies, lies and more lies.

AN interesting comment from the several hundred in response to Frank Rich's column on the above subject:

Fred Drumlevitch
Tucson, Arizona
March 14th, 2010
9:59 am

The most important question isn't how such bald-faced attempts to rewrite history can be so shamelessly put forward by Republican politicians. The "big lie" technique has become standard operating procedure for both right-wing politicians and corporate CEOs, so its occurrence shouldn't surprise.

Rather, the investigation should focus on how so many Americans can be so deficient not only in their knowledge of formal history, but also in their powers of analysis and their memory of relatively recent events that shouldn't have been forgotten. That is relevant not only to the lies of the Bush regime then and now, but also to the lies of tomorrow, whether from the old guard or from new actors on the political stage with whom we may not yet even be acquainted.

Could it be that lead poisoning, senile dementia, and Alzheimer's are much more widespread than believed? Could be, but the most parsimonious explanation is woefully extensive popular ignorance coupled with insufficient training in reasoning and analysis. We are witnessing the consequences of a widespread failure of education, a populace that seems to pride itself on how little it knows, and a mainstream news media that is all too happy to serve its corporate masters by catering to, rather than disrupting, that popular ignorance.