President Obama has nominated James Comey to be the new head of the FBI. Comey was one of the Bushie lawyers who thought that waterboarding was not torture, a position that was completely different from earlier views of DasGov.
The Senate should reject the nomination. We do not need torture advocates anywhere in law enforcement.
On another note, I've been reading "The Great War and Modern Memory" by Paul Fussell. Much of it is incomprehensible to me, as it seems heavily grounded in English literary tradition, of which I know almost nothing.* Fussell mentions that point in the afterword, he admits that said literary tradition has become increasingly irrelevant.
He made one point in the last chapter, that the British blatant propaganda during the First World War, propaganda that was about 99% false, with stories about raped Belgian nuns and abused children, left a mark of deep distrust on the people. "Believe none of what you read" was a commonly-voiced view after the War. And so, when stories began to be circulated of German atrocities and death camps, people were disinclined to give them any credence. As Fussell put it: "Nobody can begin to calculate the number of Jews who died in the second War because of ridicule in the twenties and thirties of Allied propaganda..."
Nothing much changes. The press was co-opted during World War One and printed government lies on demand, whether it be lies about the Germans or lies about the conditions endured by their own soldiers. From the lies ladled out to justify the Iraq War to the lies about progress in Afghanistan, believing none of what you read in the mainstream press is as valid today as it was 99 years ago.
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* I would have though that "a pilgrim's progress" would have something to do with either the sailing of the Mayflower or a John Wayne movie.
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1 comment:
Right on dude, er, dudette, er, Ms. Misfit.
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