- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
From Glenn's post: Allowing that revisionism also ensures that the critical lessons that ought to be learned will instead be easily and quickly forgotten when similar episodes occur here in the future.
We Americans, being a comparatively young culture, do so love our mythical conflicts: "Cowboys versus Indians", "the Minutemen versus the Redcoats", "US versus the commies", and so on. The reality is of course a little more complex and the sides a little more contextual than that, yet these myths endure and have been used to define the 'American' character: we, the good and right, forever fighting 'them', the wrong and corrupt. Anyone who questions this is a 'pinko' or a 'traitor'.
The media has helpfully reinforces this illusion, both within the political arena since the founding of our nation and through the advent of mass entertainment. The complex and difficult work of counterterrorism can be finished in just a day on "24", law enforcement is as easy as "Law & Order", marital life is just simple comedy of "The King of Queens", while the exhausting business of governance is just 40 minutes of "The West Wing".
Add to this the charming euphemisms that have replaced the word "torture" the media and public have so happily embraced, and a general decline in our education system to where our children know less and question less, its little wonder our country behaves like a rogue elephant armed with a rocket launcher.
Can this change? Of course it can; it merely takes a considerable amount of time and consistent effort. Among other things, getting the American public to actually face up to what's happening in its collective name would be a big step all on its own. Sadly, with continued prevalence and pre-emanance of the insular Washingtonian Establishment and its self-loving punditry, even that small awakening is going to prove difficult. How many first hand reports have we received from Iraq in the last year?
Perhaps this generation will prove a little saner and less attack-prone than the one before it. I fear that's the most one can hope for.
