From an excellent opinion piece about "Bush's Big Lies"…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:43 PM Permalink

…in todays LA Times:

…How did such dangerously bad legal memos ever get taken seriously in the first place?

One answer is suggested by the so-called Big Lie theory of political propaganda, articulated most infamously by Adolf Hitler. Ordinary people "more readily fall victim to the big lie than the small lie," wrote Hitler, "since they themselves often tell small lies ... but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

In other words: Paradoxically, the more outrageous the claim, the more apt we are to assume there must be some truth to it. Just as some banks and insurance companies are apparently "too big to fail," some claims from those with political power seem to strike us as "too big to disbelieve." "That seems so outrageous it must be right," we tell ourselves. "The important people keep saying it -- they must know something I don't know."

That's the only explanation I can come up with for why the 2001-2002 memos stood as Bush administration doctrine for as long as they did. (The Big Lie theory also helps explain why other manifestly false Bush administration claims prevailed in the face of the evidence: Recall, for instance, how we were assured that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the war would be a
cakewalk?)

Big lies prevail because we can't bring ourselves to believe that our leaders could be so dishonest or deluded. And big lies can do terrible damage, of course. The Bush administration's big legal lies paved the way for some of the most shameful episodes in our history, including the official authorization of torture.

In the end, thankfully, all big lies collapse under their own weight.…

gw bush and Adolf Hitler, soulmates. If there is a Hell I'm sure Adolf has already made a reservation for bush.

Labels: bad laws, bush hypocrisy, corruption, disinformation, lies