EAST MONTPELIER – Is the Strait of Hormuz open or not? If it is at all, whose ships are allowed to pass through it? Is the American blockade of Iranian ports still in effect? How many ships and aircraft have we committed to expressing our displeasure with Iran? What’s the daily cost (what Civil War generals called the butcher’s bill)?
It’s an old truism that the first casualty in any war is the truth. While stipulating that this isn’t a war (which it certainly will be if the United States ever begins using land forces to impose its capricious will), the fact is that the truth died before the first attack was launched, and it has not yet risen from its grave.
Thus those of us who bear the financial burden of the hostilities have no idea, and can’t even get one, what our dollars are purchasing, or more important, why. Some months ago we were jubilantly informed that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program had been “obliterated.” Now it appears that it hasn’t been, and we need to spend a few dozen more billion to accomplish that putative goal. Plus, of course, throw a few thousand more of our youngsters into the fray. (I’ll admit a personal grievance here, that none of them will bear the names of any of our illustrious leaders. It appears that bone spurs are a genetic disease.)
It appears that the truth about the confrontation between the United States and Iran (how soon we forget Venezuela; and Cuba is next. Cuba probably could get off without any bruises if the Epstein files were next) will forever be obscured in the rapid-fire personal pronouncements from the Oval Office. I try to imagine what it must be like to work for such a guy, particularly if you’re in charge of deploying the children of loyal American citizens. It must be like playing red-light, green light. And if you lose your aircraft carrier, your own career is up in smoke.
But the biggest surprise and disappointment has been the ovine reaction of Congress. You’d think they’d be into this with both feet. Instead, their feet seem to be pretty much up on their desks, going along with the President’s whims in hopes of being unnoticed by either him or the voters, who’re champing at the bit to get a crack at the ballot box in just six months. We hear this a lot, but it may be true that this is the most consequential election in our lifetimes. And a mid-term at that.
Meanwhile the misinformation and disinformation spreads everywhere, like the molasses in the famous Boston flood of 1919. Sifting through it, I’m at a loss (as must be almost anyone) to distinguish fact from fiction. I can read the New York Times to try and get the facts, but its reports on the Strait of Hormuz, for example reflect the same confusion we experience trying to keep up with its status.
Where and when have we experienced this sort of thing before? There was a spate of it during the Vietnam war, when General Westmoreland, grossly inflated the number of enemy soldiers killed each day. But the wholesale lying about the administration is most reminiscent of 1943-45, when Joseph Goebbels was promoted to Minister of Propaganda and was turned loose on the German people. By the end of the war it was impossible for Germans, listening to the news on their little government-provided radios, to discern fact from fiction, until Russian armor and artillery were actually rumbling into eastern Berlin. It was all Goebbels’ doing.
Goebbels was a scholar, an aspiring writer and playwright with a doctorate in philology, essentially the study of languages, their history, and their use. He was also an accomplished public speaker, who rehearsed his speeches in front of a mirror, just as his idol (“I love him,” he wrote in his journal) Hitler did. Hitler even used a film producer to capture his gestures and inflections. Between the two of them, the toxic waste produced for public consumption did indeed resemble the molasses flood.
I bring this up for the obvious reason that our present situation in the United States is eerily similar. We seem to have been so belabored with such a mixture of truths and untruths that it’s no longer possible to distinguish between them. They even get produced during the nighttime hours, as our increasingly insomniac and unhinged president creates new material when he ought to be getting some sleep. It’s impossible not to notice that we, too, have haters in our government who will use its power to crush those they deem enemies and persons undeserving of participation in our national blessings. Truly, those who cannot remember the past . . .
Willem Lange is a contractor, writer and storyteller who lives in East Montpelier, Vermont.
