When lies become the means of persuasion a democracy cannot stand. Adjusting your ideas to your audience and adjusting your audience to your ideas (Donald Bryant) is the essence of political, deliberative speech. Such "adjustment" takes place in a context where free exchange of ideas which prevents prevarication. When an opponent has opportunity to directly rebut, the truth will emerge.

What we are seeing in our leaders is not "adjustment of ideas," or management of ideas to lead audiences to what they perceive as the best conclusion; rather we are seeing boldfaced lies.

Here are some examples taken from The Independent (UK):

The build-up to war: What Bush said,

Intelligence leaves no doubt that Iraq continues to possess and conceal lethal weapons
George Bush, Us President 18 March, 2003

Now Rumsfeld says:
It is possible Iraqi leaders decided they would destroy them [WMD] prior to the conflict
Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary 28 May, 2003

For which lie did innocent civilians and soldiers die?

We are facing and information crisis. Really. The pattern of information flow I have been writing about continues to emerge. Information to the Bush administration--into parts of the government, and restricted information out. It is a direct attack on democracy and we should all be enraged. This Faux-Conservative regime is systematically using information control to dismantle the core values and structures that made this country so different from the rest of the world and so inviting to it.


Now, however, we are seeing the same sorts of treatment of our basic communication, and legal systems that we used to decry in petty dictatorships and third-rate "republics."


The Faux-Conservatives are not about conserving, but about total destruction of the liberal, democratic system that marked this country's founding. It is absolutely evident in the present economic policy of bankruptcy being openly and consciously pursued by Bush and Co. Here's how this fits with information control:


Peronet Despeignes reports in The Financial Times that a report commissioned by Paul O'Neill when he was Secretary of the Treasury projected future federal deficits at $44 TRILLION dollars. That represents 94% of the total US household assets. In other words, we'll "owe our souls to the company store." To pay it off would mean a 66% across the board tax increase, which, of course, cannot happen. The scary part is that Bush suppressed the report to ensure passage of his stupid tax plan by purposely excluding this particular report from the budget proposal.


According to Despeignes, "Laurence Kotlikoff, an expert on long-term budget accounting, alleged in a recent Boston Globe editorial that the Bush administration suppressed the research to ease passage of the tax-cut plan.


The exercise of such power, so blatantly and cynically should have us all chanting, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" But we don't.

Frank Rich, in a recent essay in the NY Times, makes an interesting analogy between the Matrix and the present (and future) consolidation of media ownership. We are in a matrix of integrated media such that, while two-thirds of the population can't name ANY Democratic candidates for president, ninety-five percent know about the Matrix Reloaded. How? Well, "Entertainment Weekly itself, an AOL Time Warner publication ... ran two cover stories on "The Matrix Reloaded" in a single month," that's how. And this is an "itty-bitty" example of how the system works.

At the local level, we can see it happening. The Sacramento Bee reported today that KWOD was purchased by a Pennsylvania media conglomerate, Entercom. The fact that the owner is no longer local, but based on the east coast, is matter enough for concern (another blow to localism). What's more troubling is that Entercom also owns KRXQ, KSEG, and KDND --all in Sacramento. Entercom spokesman, John Geary, was clear that this serves as an efficiency for them so they can essentially run four stations with the same staff. Not only is there constriction of editorial, managerial, and artistic control which are all bads, but a bunch of folks lost their jobs in the bargain. So much for the Bushie's notions of job creation!

I imagine Michael Powell hacking into the system to tell us while there is no spoon, there is greater freedom in the market place. Whoa.