The Big Lie

Over the last year or so, I've become more aware of a troubling phenomenon. I've noticed it especially in Bush's administration, though I suppose it would be evident in any political arena, or in any broad media, for that matter. What I'm talking about is lying. Bold-faced, fairly obvious untruths, stated and reported as fact. Sometimes they're concealed as opinions, but they still carry the weight of the speaker's reputation and the media's transmission. Saying something makes it so, kind of - gives it a life of its own. Even if the thing is later proven absolutely false, it may still live on, or at least will have influenced people during its life.

Today's example is the widely reported statement U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft made in his resignation letter: "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." Of course this statement is ludicrous in its assertion: we're all done! we're all safe now! Yet, people will hear it on the news; ABC, Fox, NPR, you name it. The AG himself said it. To the President of the United States, no less. Personally, I didn't pay much attention to it - I dismissed it out of hand and barely gave it another thought.

Then I found this comment in the Slashdot story covering Ashcroft's resignation,

This is an example of one thing the Bush administration understands, how to kill discussions. The trick is to say something so outlandish and WRONG that everyone who pays attention will know it as wrong and the discussion dies there, while at the the same time, the less observant get the desired impression.

RIGHT! I thought. That's it - that's the effect I've been noticing! But wait, there's more. Someone replied, "It's called The Big Lie and it's a technique with quite a lot of history," and they linked to a Wikipedia article, "Big Lie", which in turn quotes Hitler's Mein Kampf (guess it's Nazi Day, here today),

All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

He goes on after that with his nonsense about how the Jews are the big liars, yadda, yadda. Regardless, he's describing exactly what I've been witnessing. And as the original Slashdot poster pointed out, the opposition to Bush can't fight that. Or if they do try, then they're caught up in arguing about what amounts to complete bullshit, and entirely on Bush's terms.