Quote from spect8or:
Fundamentally, I understand that whatever the deadhead public may have been told is of little consequance to me, as I can see the very, very good reasons for waging this war. Reasons which, if the public were told, the war would probably have never gone ahead.
Precisely what the Germans said about their "public" under Hitler.
(Because, as I've said, there are simply far too many liberal cry babies that simply cannot understand the ways of the world.) So, to you, these become 'false pretenses', but to me they're just the way government works.
You are exclusive in understanding the ways of the world, sufficient to justify fooling the American people? How megalomaniacal of you.
I mean, do you honestly think that matters of international relations, national security and world order are best left to mindless schleps -- ie, the general public -- that don't know the first thing about them?
We have a representative democracy. When an administration thinks they need to treat the electorate like mindless schleps, this Nixonian mentality of the power elite is historically dangerous.
That's absurd. Pacifism draws a powerful emotional reaction from people, so it's far too easy for the pollyanna peacenik crowd to use such influence to prevent the administration from taking very necessary actions, but emotionally hard to swallow actions.
Pacifism is much less powerful than hate mongering, fear mongering, and creating a threat following an event like 9/11 that didn't exist as described.
That's why the government has to use its propaganda machine. Nothing new, it's always been that way. Understandably, for those that disagree with government actions, it's difficult to take. Welcome to the real world, mac.
Josef Goebbels shared the same perspective you do about the need for propaganda machines.
Yeah, I can imagine your comeback's gonna have something about how all that undermines some precious principles that you liberals (actually, and a lot of conservatives) like to believe that America was 'founded on' and became great by. Unfortunately for you, that's just feel-good history. To even pretend that America's rise to the top was built on anything but military success and self-serving opportunism is to delude oneself. Personally, I don't have any problem with that.
Ah yes, those silly "precious principles."
