by Eric Zuesse, The Duran:
In human affairs, lies are the biggest weapons, because weapons are used in order to control (or maybe even kill) the given target, and the main way to do that when the target is another human being, is to deceive that person, so that that person mentally becomes the liar’s slave.
For example, it worked this way, during the build-up, starting on 7 September 2002, to America’s invasion of Iraq, which was based totally upon lies from the White House, which succeeded at enslaving the U.S. public to support doing that criminal invasion, which destroyed Iraq and caused the U.S. Government to be hated by virtually all Iraqis.
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And there are numerous other examples, including America’s potentially costliest foreign-policy initiative ever since at least the year 2000, which has been the U.S. Government’s war against Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine, which likewise is based entirely upon lies. On the basis of those lies, it has won the support not only of the vast majority of the American people but of the people in all U.S.-allied countries — all on the basis only of lies.
So: one should never underestimate the power of lies. Lies don’t have the explosive force of nuclear weapons, but are instead the means whereby publics become mentally enslaved to support not only conventional wars such as the invasion of Iraq, but also nuclear superpower war, such as the United States Government now is in the preliminary preparatory stages of waging ultimately against both Russia and China — as-if a peaceful U.S. Government would be facing any authentic danger from either one of those countries.
In this way, lies can turn out to be such a big weapon as to end up maybe destroying this entire planet.
This is the case because history consistently demonstrates (as the two examples that have been linked-to here — Iraq and Ukraine — have shown) that the public doesn’t learn from history but instead keeps on believing liars, no matter how many times those liars have lied in the past and no matter how enormously dangerous continuing to believe them in the future might ultimately turn out to have been. Publics everywhere are, and consistently remain, suckers for liars, regardless of how overwhelmingly demonstrated it has been that those liars should not be believed, but should instead be permanently imprisoned for their enormously harmful lies in the past. Conservatives believe conservative liars no matter how much those have deceived them in the past, and liberals believe liberal liars no matter how much those have decieved them in the past; and, so, the public simply select which types of liars to believe, as-if liars who confirm their prejudices ought to be trusted. That’s insane, but it is (tragically) normal.
Routinely, people destroy and even kill each other on the basis of lies. The commonest ‘solution’ to this problem is censorship — which facilitates lies, and prevents the exposing to the public that lies ARE lies instead of truths. So, this ‘solution’ is ITSELF a lie. In fact: no democracy can exist where there is censorship. Democracy is possible ONLY where there is NO censorship. Ultimately, an individual, on one’s own, is the sole person who has the right to determine what is true and what is false. Democracy is built upon, and built ONLY upon, this principle — that censorship itself is blasphemous — that for one person to censor what another person reads, hears, or sees, is to produce a master/slave relationship, and that, consequently, no democracy can tolerate censorship. Indeed: it is upon the basis of censorship that each and every one of America’s international aggressions (coups, invasions, illegal sanctions, etc.) has been done. Most of that censorship is perpetrated by the corporate media but some of it is done by the Government’s own personnel, whose lies to the public then become stenographically transmitted by the corporate media to the public. There is constantly a selective process, but it favors the Government’s lies, over the truths that would expose those lies. It is not enough to distrust the liars; they must constantly be exposed. This would be a very different type of country if that were done. It would be a democracy.
