Another Inconvenient Truth

From Greg Harris at The Talent Show:

I hate to think that it's come to this, but it really does feel like the notion of making a ...cogent argument using logic and unquestionable facts seems...naive.

If you wanted to remind the world that 2+2=4, these days you might have to deal with the Arithmetic Study Society who insists that there's growing evidence among mathematicians that 2+2=5. We don't know for sure yet, they'll tell us, so until we've got all the facts, the brainless media will do their best to play the centrist role and think that saying 2+2=4½ is a responsible position. After all, they can't uphold their journalistic duty to avoid objectivity if they choose sides in political battles.

Of course, this just enables the biggest problem of them all : the intellectual laziness of the American public.

Finally. A metaphor that puts all this into context. Harris wrote this after reviewing Billmon's review of An Inconvenient Truth.

Which got me thinking about a post I wrote over on Burned Out Paranoid Democrat back in May of '05. The reason people keep disbelieving Inconvenient Truths is because someone else is always out there spewing Comfortable Lies:

...many people's vision of America is the one they learned from their sixth grade teacher. The one where we were always the good guys. The one where Pilgrims brought civilization to the savage Indians. The one where the cavalry always rode to the rescue. The one where Henry Ford modernized mass production of cars, making them affordable for everyone. The one where hard work will get you ahead, no matter who you are.

And there's truth in all those statements. But not the whole truth. They don't want to know about the America where we were sometimes the greedy, awful bastards. The one where the Pilgrims actively sought to destroy native cultures. The one where the cavalry knowingly sold smallpox-infested blankets to the Indians. The one where Henry Ford was a vicious union-buster and rabid anti-Semite. The one where no matter how hard some people work, they will find it nearly impossible to earn a living wage.

Painful truths. Ones that make people ask questions about their country. Difficult questions. And many don't want to do that.

So, with the help of spinmeisters, revisionist historians, and other nameless, faceless people, comfortable lies are created, and circulated. The internet gives them lives of their own. Fat, drug-addled radio personalities throw them out. They sound plausible, reasonable. And, they sound like the America their sixth-grade teacher told them about.

Comfortable.

Lies.

There really were WMD's in Iraq: Comfortable lie. The judges who ruled in favor of Michael Schaivo were activist judges: Comfortable lie. We're one nation under God, and that God is the traditional Judeo-Christian God: Comfortable lie. Homosexuality is a choice: Comfortable lie.

Reading the post, and the ones around it, it's hard to believe how much bullshit we've let get past us. How many lies this administration's pulled over on us, got caught doing, and yet they're still in power. So many progressives, liberals and Democrats are looking forward to the November elections, and I'm sitting here wondering what 2+2=5 crap the Rovians will pull this time. Has America been beaten up enough by these guys to act yet?

Yeharr