The Grandure of the Deceit by Jim Culleny For the better part of his two terms President Clinton was villified by the right for being a liar. No holds were barred, no matter what the international situation was. But conservatives never considered what they were doing to be unpatriotic. It wasn’t. Today we have an administration that misled us into a war and manipulates information without shame, creating lies that have resulted in death and destruction and altered the character of the nation, and the right claims it’s unpatriotic to be critical. It’s not. If we're talking about mendacity, the difference between the Clinton and Bush administrations is simply the the grandure of the deceit. As a Bush administration official put it in a report by ABC news, "We were not lying, but it was just a matter of emphasis" --which sounds suspiciously like what the definition of 'is' is. As far as I'm concerned, nothing anyone claims the definition of "is" is, is more important than what actually is. In the past we've looked to the news media to keep us informed of what "is" is on any given day. In fact the news media has always been our first line of defense against official mendacity and the inclination of Men In Power to create information that corresponds to what they think "is" should be. That is, they were. They were until they became part of the problem and entered the pantheon of mega-corporations to which info takes a back seat to market position. Traditionally Men In Power favor only information that keeps them in power. A day with a history book will prove that this is a fact of life the creators of the government of the United States made the focus of their endeavors --you know, checks and balances and all that. And it's a fact of life that can be appreciated by everyone from the street on up, because it's integral to human nature. Everybody who's been around the block a few times has run into at least one power monger. A husband, wife, mother, father, boss... you know the type. With a little simple multiplication we can calculate the damage this urge to power will produce in any government that sculpts information and lacks a healthy opposition ...democratic republic or not. In the innocent days of the republic an independent press kept us armed with fairly accurate information. But although it's always been faulty, it's never been as seriously compromised as it is today. In truth a people without accurate information cannot have a democracy. To be manipulated with mis or dis information is to be a nation of dupes. Governments thrive on propaganda and just love dupes. A recent commentary by NY Times writer Paul Krugman addresses presidential fabrications and the role of the news media in the Iraq war. He muses about our detour into exec-u-automatic war. (Actually, some call it 'preemptive' war, but in poet Wendell Berry's response to the passage of the Patriot’s Act we come to see that it's more like presidential serial-war-de-juor.) Anyway, Krugman wonders whether, "... most of the public will ever learn that the original case for war has turned out to be false. In fact,” he says, “my guess is that most Americans believe that we have found W.M.D.'s. Each potential find gets blaring coverage on TV; how many people catch the later announcement (if it is ever announced) that it was a false alarm? It's a pattern of misinformation that recapitulates the way the war was sold in the first place. Each administration charge against Iraq received prominent coverage; the subsequent debunking did not." At one point the Krugman asks if it matters that we were misled into war. He observes, "Some people say that it doesn't: we won, and the Iraqi people have been freed. But we ought to ask some hard questions - not just about Iraq, but about ourselves." A good place to start would be to look up "deceit" in the dictionary where you'll find the picture of a right-wing Republican apologist in front of a backdrop of logos of major TV news corporations. Then look up "seducible" and you'll find a group photo of 70% of the U.S. population. If we could only get it into our heads that once a government knows it can get away with creating lies to hype a "good" cause it's only a matter of time before it cranks up its lie-making machine to hype any cause. Owning to the tenor of the times and the effects of two great mishaps (the 2000 election and 9/11), in practical terms, whatever "is" was before the truth became a sound bite-- will be a mystery wrapped in an enigma cloaked in a photo-op of the president getting tail-hooked onto an aircraft carrier wearing big goggles and a top-gun suit, then being greeted by a sea of cheering troops, and finally giving a speech about how the war is ...sort-of... over. It was a moment made for TV, literally. What I want to know is, how are the Democrats ever gonna beat Bush if they're not in a position to start a war with ...say, even Luxembourg!