We Americans like to think we're somehow morally superior, not just to other nations but to something like propaganda, which, to a lot of people, sounds like some kind of lame excuse. We have such complete faith in our grounding in right and wrong that we think we're immune to evil. We put our faith in fundamentalist religious leaders who tell us that good and evil are unchanging, eternal verities-unlike mere facts.
But looking back, it's clear that what divided the country so deeply before and during the early stages of our unprovoked attack on Iraq was a simple question of fact: were George W. Bush and his minions telling the truth or not?
A connection between al Qaeda and Iraq; WMDs; yellow cake from Niger; bringing freedom and democracy to the country and the whole region: it was all a pack of lies.
And if we have such a totally immovable sense of right and wrong, one wonders why we've so blandly swallowed the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. If torture isn't absolutely evil, at all times and in all places, then what is?
Or do we play with words to fool our consciences, and, like Alberto Gonzales, simply define torture out of existence? Gonzales' updated definition, replacing that of US law and the Geneva Conventions, is that torture is inflicting pain equivalent to major organ failure or death. Sounds more like attempted murder to me.
The fact is most people in most places tend to go along with conventional wisdom and comply with authority. It's not generally a bad thing. It predisposes us to be law-abiding and makes peace possible. But when the same powerful interests control both government and the media, then we are all vulnerable to propaganda, and under the influence of propaganda, ordinary people are capable of doing very great evil without even feeling guilty.
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