When Hitler was warned he would go down in history as a despised mass murder because of the Holocaust, he said that no one remembered the Armenian genocide of the Ottoman Turks in1915 that killed as many as 1.2 million Armenians. So, he was not worried.
Our faulty collective memories would protect him. But at least there was a 20-plus year gap between the two genocidal events and a relative lack of documentation together with a great deal of denial. So, our imperfect memory was somewhat excusable.
One thing that always amazes me is the ability of both the media and the US population to ignore the recent past mistakes by leaders no matter how enormous and destructive. One form of memory loss is based on PTSD and trauma. But the collective forgetting by large portions of US population about recent events seems to be more of a self-defense strategy that is based on a desire to avoid guilt.
When the WMDs lie justifying the Iraq war was exposed, shockingly the lie was all but buried in an unmarked grave and seldom visited or discussed again.
Supporter of the war did not want to face their bad judgment, the dishonesty of their leaders, and the war mongering behavior that led to the death of almost 3,500 US service members and many times that number of injuries.
Part of the problem was that the mainstream media had become champions for the war and were embarrassed to have missed the lie – a lie which was obvious to our allies and to most who had not gotten war fever based on a desire for revenge against Muslims after the 9/11 attacks in New York City.
The attack on the French who refused to support the war who were called “surrender monkeys” and the renaming of French Fries to “freedom fries” was embraced enthusiastically by the right wing. No promoter of the war wanted to apologize for these insults despite having been thoroughly amused by them while embracing a macho American perspective on war. Collective amnesia was the best response.
One headline you will never read is “Iraq War Supporters Apologize to the French for Past Insults.”
And following the war, the media could not sell products by berating buyers and reminding them of their ignorance and displaced vindictiveness. The news media gave the public what they wanted by trumpeting Bush’s war on terror and no doubt sold lots of ad space to enhance their profitability.
The last thing the media wanted to do was draw attention to their failures. So, they participated in the silent burial.
Republicans were allowed to walk away from the grave in the dead of night, and the avoid answering for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the estimated two trillion-dollar cost of the Iraq war. Shock and Awe was suddenly not so awesome.
As a Rollingstone opinion piece said: (updated to include the current left/right split in the press)
“The press in the wake of the WMD affair assumed the safety-in-numbers instincts of herd animals: like wildebeest, the instant 51% of the pack decides to run in a direction, they all run that way, even if it means bounding off a factual cliff. That the [press] landscape is currently split into two different [liberal/conservative] sets of wildebeest is not much of a comfort.”
Dick Cheney, a chief promoter of the war, benefited handsomely from billions of dollars paid to his former company Halliburton for exclusive, no-bid contracts to support US service personal in Iraq. He had numerous pre-war interviews where he asserted Saddam was linked to terrorism based on a few phone calls without even knowing anything about the content of the conversations.
Now if I mistakenly call a wrong number, and I get a criminal’s answering machine, I am “linked” to that criminal.
No interviewers at the time seemed to be able to show how slippery and potentially meaningless the word “linked” was. The press was afraid of Cheney and any criticism might lead to their loss of access to the Washington power establishment.
Cheney became a walking billboard advertisement for the war and his “interviews” became one-man speeches and soliloquies promoting the war with virtually no push-back.
The 9/11 Commission concluded that they had seen no “evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaida in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States." Cheney was a serial liar who put enormous pressure on intelligence agencies to promote the war and unlike most of the Bush officials following the war, never admitted to the lies.
The [Iraq War] vote was “premised on the biggest lie ever told in American history,” said Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, then a House member who voted in favor of the war authorization. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa in a rare reflection said that “all of us that voted for it probably are slow to admit” that the weapons of mass destruction did not exist. Oops.
Even the attempts to make comprehensive lists of Iraq cheerleaders post-invasion inevitably focused only on usual suspects like Fleischer, current Trump official John Bolton, neoconservatives like Max Boot, David Frum, and Bill Kristol, and winger goons like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. The war’s lesser supporters were allowed to remain largely anonymous.
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash, and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. were some of the few courageous leaders in Congress that resisted the mass stampede to war. In the end, only 28 senators voted against the war authorization and all but one were Democrats. Republicans loved Bush’s made-up media campaign to blame Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, and the GOP fully supported the war.
The right wing and some Democrats supporting and then ignoring their participation in “the greatest lie ever told in American history”, the basis for the Iraq war, was a dry run in preparation for the blizzard of lies to come.
It prepared the population to accept the current President’s daily and hourly lies all through his first term and up to the present day. The well documented 3,000 plus lies from his first term ceased to matter. The President averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day during his first term became like the weather report – an little noticed everyday occurrence.
The public seemed to have developed a habit, an addiction to being lied to, and an admiration for the adolescent naughtiness of those who got away with telling lies. Attractive lies and fantasies, and false promises were pleasant, entertaining, and like a bottomless candy dish that never ran out of tasty treats.
The Iraq war lie was a test case, a trial balloon, that showed a weakness in the American character - a fundamental flaw of which the right wing could take full advantage.
The current president knew based on that history that he could exploit this weakness. When no one was held accountable for the Iraq war, politicians realized they could get away with almost any lie or misrepresentation and the public could be trusted to assist them in this with a combination of forgetfulness, admiration, or strategic silence.
The President with the help of the right-wing media has succeeded in getting people to believe in lies beyond any propagandist’s wildest dreams.
But the mainstream media such as NPR have people on shows such as Politics Monday who with happy smiles talk of the president’s imaginative statements in various ways seemingly approving of them and certainly failing to condemn them.
Such observations as that the President’s statistics have little relationship to reality (the price of eggs have declined 87% since the election) are always accompanied by a smile, a wink, and a nod. Dishonest claims are just so clever, entertaining, cute, and expected these days.
The fact that such false statistical statements could negatively affect dozens and sometimes millions of people does not seem to concern these news and opinion entertainers.
A more recent example of the acceptance of lies occurred when Fox News lied for months about a stolen election. When asked to provide evidence in court, they paid off the accusers, Dominion Voting Systems, to the tune of $787M because they had no proof. This was about a quarter of Fox’s yearly earnings, but it was the cost of doing business.
The stolen election was all made up and they promoted it ceaselessly despite knowing it was false (based on testimony in discovery from the lawsuit) saying its lies were “newsworthy”. The cost of electing an oligarch and dictator-wannabe was remarkably low in a multi-trillion-dollar economy. US democracy was sold at a discount.
The Republican establishment, voters in both parties, and even the mainstream press had little or no reaction – the election was stolen lie was another colossal, extremely damaging lie that was mostly declared dead and buried in an unmarked grave. In a Vox article, it was stated that “The network’s key players feel compelled to supply the conspiratorial content the audience is demanding.” Fox viewers and Fox News were co-conspirators in the big lie.
It is becoming increasingly clear that no set of institutional rules or laws can protect a country if the people running these institutions lose their honor and integrity.
Honor was a concept that people in the past held in high esteem. Those who have seen suffering, poverty. and injustice in their lives tend to value honor more as was true with the WW II generation.
Older friends would say to me with pride that they had not lied to others or cheated them even when it was tempting. They were proud that they maintained their honor throughout their lives. People in the military also tend to value honor since a single lie can result in the loss of countless lives in battle.
People in 12 Step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous put great value on honor and sincerity since their addictions were often tightly bound up with their lying to themselves in the past. Returning to their addiction usually meant returning to a life ruled by lies. Medieval knights were often bound by a code of honor.
Mike Pence regardless of his continuing support of a thoroughly dishonest President maintained his honor when it really counted when he certified the election for Biden.
Codes of honor in the military and some colleges require honesty but in addition also require people bound by these codes to reject and have nothing to do with dishonorable people. These codes of behavior require people bound by them to not lie, cheat, steal, nor tolerate those who do. Someone like the President with his multiple thousands of well-documented lies would be immediately and forcefully rejected as someone without a shred of honor and someone who should never be trusted or supported.
In an honor-based society, the President could not get elected to be dogcatcher.
Today, virtually the entire Republican party is a case study in the loss of honor and integrity with the President as their much-loved leader and the king of lies.
Sadly, given the current situation, unless something changes soon, I do not see how the Republic can survive much longer with this addiction to lying and believing lies.
I am hoping to be proven wrong.
