If any of you haven't seen "In the Loop" I can't recommend it enough. It's perhaps the most biting political comedy made since "Dr. Strangelove."
There's one character who resembles Donald Rumsfeld in demeanor and relationship to the truth who drops the pithy one-liner "We don't need any more facts. In the land of truth, my friend, the man with one fact is the king."
Callout diaries are forbidden, so there will be no linking, but there's been a rather shameful front-page diary tonight excoriating us for buying into propaganda, and running of into the weeds. Sorry to say, it goes with the territory.
We are being asked to remain moored to the facts, to reality. But the fact is, we are living in a world where we have access to very few of them.
We will get facts wrong.
We will get facts wrong because our government has worked systematically for more than a decade to ensure we have no access to facts, and a president who is hellbent on prosecuting those interested in getting us facts.
You'll have to forgive if occasionally it's hard to disentangle top secret programs of an extraordinary size and scope, and details get lost in the shuffle. President Obama told us on Friday that debate is healthy, debate is good. He welcomes debate. Which is rich, given that we can only debate it because it was leaked, and now the leaker has already had his case referred to the DOJ for possible extradition and prosecution.
So yes, by all means. Let's remain moored to the facts. But let's understand the reality we live in. That reality is that citizens no longer have any meaningful control over their government, and our media is cowed. Glenn Greenwald in a British paper scooped it because the Washington Post was afraid to publish all the details.
The sheer absence of any context in the previous diary was breathtaking, and I hope that we can all remain grounded in fact while understanding those in power have done their damnedest that ensure we have none. It took one man with extraordinary moral courage to blow apart that edifice, and we owe him thanks. Let's hope more like him give us more facts.