At The Inquirer, Will Bunch writes—America's '2+2=5 moment' is a scary lurch toward autocracy:
To the brilliant 20th-century political thinker, and author of the always-too-relevant 1984, George Orwell, blowing up the fundamental meaning of truth was a bigger threat to humankind than the atom bomb. Here’s what he wrote in an essay in 1943, at the peak of World War II:
Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. … The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened” – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five.This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.
America is having its “two and two are five” moment right now, and, frankly, it is every bit as frightening for the future of democracy as Orwell once imagined.
Let’s back up for a split second. It’s not as if Washington, D.C., has always been the beacon of truth. Personally, I’ve always adopted the mantra of the late great investigative journalist I.F. Stone, that all governments lie. And just in my lifetime, I’ve seen some doozies: The “credibility gap” over who was winning the Vietnam War (exposed by the Pentagon Papers, recounted in the new flick The Post), Richard “I am not a crook” Nixon’s Watergate cover-up, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that weren’t. All terrible lies, some of them leading to death and misery. Each of them involving massive manipulating of the facts on the ground.
But there’s a very real difference between twisting facts and blowing them up, to create a state where objective truth not only no longer matters but doesn’t even really exist — where if President Trump or his minions say that such-and-such-an-event never happened, then it never happened. That is the precarious precipice at which we stand as the Trump presidency crosses its one-year anniversary.
The Rand Corporation — which, ironies of ironies, is where whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg worked and purloined the Pentagon Papers — just came out with a report that America is suffering from what it calls “Truth Decay,” arguing that recent trends — the rise of social media and the opinion bubbles that they can create, lack of trust in institutions (fostered by those earlier lies like the Iraq war) and increased partisan bickering — have created a vacuum in which objective reality is in deep peril. And Team Trump is feeding on that void. [...]
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QUOTATION
“Utopia's value lies not in its relation to present practice but in its relation to a possible future. Its ‘practical’ use is to overstep the immediate reality to depict a condition whose clear desirability draws us on, like a magnet.”
~Krishan Kumar, Utopianism (1991)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2012—John Boehner—who could make a mint on pipeline—whines about President Obama delaying Keystone:
With the Obama administration's refusal to kowtow to the arbitrary and politically motivated Republican deadline to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, Speaker of the House John Boehner was one of the first out of the gate to express his fauxrage:
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah …
What he didn't say?
... in December 2010, according to Boehner’s financial disclosure forms, he invested $10,000 to $50,000 each in seven firms that had a stake in Canada’s oil sands, the region that produces the oil the pipeline would transport.
So in the coming days, as Republicans crawl out of the woodwork to denounce the president's decision, ask yourself what's in it for them besides scoring political points.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Rare Greg Dworkin/Armando agreement episode! It’s hard not to agree the GOP owns the looming shutdown & Trump co-signed the loan. Dotard J. Trump isn’t just his fan club’s president. He’s also a client! Trump-RUS-NRA love triangle is news. Again!