"Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates."
– Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 8, 20 November 1787
Regardless of such wisdom, it was for much too long that otherwise sensible people slept through Churchill's alerts to the danger of tyrants, less than a century ago. Who will neuter the propaganda weapon of today's wannabe-tyrants, foreign or domestic?
If the legal profession's clichéd explanation that shouting "Fire" in a crowded movie theater is not acceptable, how is it that propaganda threatening democracy is? Is propaganda rightly protected speech?
At the very least, we need progress to prosecute propagandists driving "schemes and artifices" for mail or wire fraud, or perjury, or defamation, or any other actionable threat I'm not thinking of. When gaming the rule of law is the rule of play, will rational problem-solvers-at-law ever advance actions at a speed to meet the need?
With bizarre mirages of propagandists filling the airwaves, some more bright lights are needed in the media to counter what's wildly opposite to reality. The mirages of crazies are certainly not diverted by media amplifications of them.
Perhaps one day, we'll again encounter worthwhile puzzles, instead of addressing how so many people can believe the unbelievable. And maybe it's time to stop looking at hucksters as if they operate by the norms of normal people. To defeat a twisted mind, we don't need to be twisted, but we'd better be able to project the next move, and get ahead of it.
Some individuals spend a lifetime's energy on coming up with distorted talk to smooth over distorted actions. Savvy people get this, and have a nose to detect the grifter and pretender. Even household pets might be inspiration here–they've retained senses to detect looming danger.
How much longer are we all to stand for glacial movements toward potential accountability? Sustaining democracy requires the wide-awake actions of "we the people."
1 comment:
This is a far more erudite statement of the old three generation rule. The first makes the money, the second squanders it, the third is raised and lives in poverty....leading to the fourth (or the first generation of the second cycle) who no longer wants to live in poverty, and gets out, works hard or smart, and starts the achievement cycle over again.
Yes many in the West are walking blindly and ignorantly into loss of leadership and integrity, and loss of values and freedoms. Those very freedoms for which our forbears fought so dearly and expensively (intellectually and militarily) are being abused in ignorance by many who have never had a moment's genuine hardship, and in many cases have never done a genuine and productive day's work in their lives.
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