Summary: The RussiaGate story rests on statements by government officials – regarded as gospel by the Left. It is a betrayal of their past, ignoring the lessons hard learned during the past three generations. Much of the Left has become gullible servants (useful idiots) of the intel agencies running this op agianst Trump. As usual in such matters, we do not know how or why. Seeing the history of government lies might help them recover.
“Since becoming a journalist I had often heard the advice to “believe nothing until it has been officially denied”.
— Claud Cockburn (Irish journalist) quoted in Discord of Trumpets: The Autobiography of a Legendary Newspaperman (1956). Often attributed to Bismarck.
Here’s the big list of lies by our leaders. This is post number 4,600 on the FM website. It’s one of the most important posts. It should be posted in every home. America will change when enough Americans no longer accept leaders who lie – even those of their own party. Post other big lies by our leaders In the comments post.
(1) Examples of lies that shaped our world
“I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.”
— George Washington in his Farewell Address (1796).
The history of American since WWII is one of lies by leaders that we eagerly embrace. No matter how often they lie, we believe. Here are some of the most outrageous, some of the most influential, and some that are just routine.
They lied, there was no missile gap.
They lied, there was no bomber gap.
9-11 was not staged from Afghanistan.
They lied. Saddam was not working with al Qaeda.
They lied. Iraq’s soldiers didn’t kill babies in Kuwait.
They lied. Torture didn’t help us find & kill bin Laden.
They lied. Hitler didn’t plan to conquer South America.
They lied. The Russians shot down our U-2 over Russia.
US lied about having intel about Saddam’s functional WMDs.
They lied. The police didn’t warn 12-year old Tamir Rice before killing him.
Iran has been 3 years from having an atomic bomb since 1984 (& still doesn’t have it).
They lied. There were no Libyan hit teams roaming America in 1981 (gated TIME article; open version).
They lied about the Tonkin Gulf incident. It was the excuse for our involvement in the Vietnam War.
They lied. Yemen’s al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) does not “pose the greatest potential threat to the United States.”
The 1976 “Team B” reports about the aggressive powerful USSR were fiction, but shaped US military policy in the 1980s.
The USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 (we eventually admitted it, then lied about the circumstances). More details here.
The US government lied about ISIS in Syria and Iraq that “We are now facing an existential threat to the security of the United States of America …”
The US government long denied the CIA’s Operation Ajax, its involvement at the center of the 1953 coup overthrowing the elected government of Iran. They admitted it in 2017 (of course, everybody in Iran already knew – only Americans were still ignorant).
The US long denied CIA and special ops involvement in the Phoenix program in South Vietnam, especially the torture and assassination. They still put a happy face on it. But there is too much evidence. Here is a balanced, if rosy, summary in the NYT.
This is just a sample. The list of big lies by our government officials is very long.
(2) FDR’s campaign against Germany before Pearl Harbor
“I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany”
— Speech by FDR on 27 October 1941 about NAZI plans to conqueror the western hemisphere.
The British set up the Security Coordination project to run information operations in the US to push us into WWII. See this description of the BSC in The Guardian. Their greatest success was the fake map showing Hitler’s plans to invade the western hemisphere, a keynote of FDR’s powerful speech on 27 October 1941 (see this story in The Daily Mail. For the full story see British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-1945. See the background and the video.
(3) Fear-mongering to start the Cold War
“Mr. President, if that’s what you want there is only one way to get it. That is to make a personal appearance before Congress and scare the hell out of the country.”
— Senator Arthur Vandenberg’s advice to Truman about how to start the Cold War. On 12 March 1947 Truman did exactly that. From Put yourself in Marshall’s place by James P. Warburg (1948). In 1941 he helped develop our wartime propaganda programs.
The Soviet Union was a great power, looking for opportunities to expand after WWII. But the US government created the Cold War by exaggerating its menace and power, and lied routinely to keep it going.
What’s sad is that they’re running the same playbook again, and we’re buying it. Government officials demonize Russia while ignoring our role in creating the Ukraine civil war: Finding truth amidst the lies about Russia & the Ukrainian civil war.
For more about this see The Ukraine anti-semitic flyer: a case study in propaganda, Let’s stop the 2-minute hate on Putin & think before we reignite the Cold War and Finding truth amidst the lies about Russia & the Ukrainian civil war. and The first rule of American war is not to believe what we’re told.
(4) All our foes are Hitler
“Every nation has the government it deserves.”
— Joseph de Maistre (lawyer, diplomat, philosopher), letter dated 13 August 1811 from Lettres et Opuscules.
Just as every geopolitical crisis is Munich 1938 to our hawks, all our foes are Hitler. Here are some claims by our Presidents. There’s a larger body from US officials, and an almost endless list of often-daft such claims by our geopolitical “experts” and other Very Serious People.
Saddam Hussein was not like Hitler, despite both Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. making the comparison. Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia was not Hitler, despite Bill Clinton making the comparison. Vladimir Putin is not Hitler, despite Hillary Clinton making the comparison of Russia with Nazi Germany(as did British PM David Cameron).
See more examples in an excerpt from War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death by Norman Solomon (2005), and in “61 Times Bill Kristol Was Reminded of Hitler and Churchill“.
(5) Other examples of lies to guide us
“An honest man’s word is as good as his bond.”
— Said by the squire Sancho Panza in Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote (1605).
Keeping us scared by false alarms about terrorism in America: The US government is competent, as proven by the results of the latest terror alert, Should we panic at the many warnings about domestic terrorism?, Are ISIS terrorists coming to America from a base in Mexico?, Who believes that the Federal government seeks to take over Texas?, and Prepare for terror on the 4th of July!
Debunking the lies: The most useful news story of 2015: the truth about the bin Laden hit.
Add your contributions to the list in the comments.
(6) Are we cowards, or just unusually gullible?
“Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful — horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. The more he fears, the more he will hate. And Hatred is also a great anodyne for shame.”
— From the demon Screwtape, in The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.
See the common element to these lies: They arouse our fear. Why does fear have such an effect on us, despite officials’ long history of lying to us about threats? How do you describe people ruled by their fears? We call them cowards. It’s the description of us that none of us dare say.
- Are Americans easily panicked cowards? I think not, but many experts disagree.
- Today’s fear-mongering (they think we’re cowards, but I’m sure they’re wrong).
- Why are we so fearful? Have we become cowards?
Our leaders so frequently employ fear to guide us because lies work. The information superhighway has not made us smarter, it just carries the lies faster and father. Our leaders will stop when we become stronger and more skeptical. On that day we will have taken a large step towards retaking control of America. We hold the solution in our hands…