THE SIMPLE LI(F)E
(Observations on the World of W #1.)
The realization came as something of a shock that I had really stopped believing anything that I was told by my television. It crystalized during a recent cable news afternoon, when I found myself looking at an item on this super-MASH the military claim to have in Iraq where they boast "If you arrive alive, it’s 95% certain you’ll survive." (Or some similar Johnny Cochran-style rhyming couplet.) As I watched what was plainly DofD free promo footage, complete with a big shiny CAT-scan machine, a cynical bubble glooped up through the slough of war propaganda, and asked me if I even believed a single word of any of this? And did I care and did it matter? In the White House they’re making it up as they go along, so why should these gosh-wow PR jobs have any relation to reality? Even if there is such a MASH in Iraq, we all know that the poor bastard grunts have spent most of the war walking round in inferior flack jackets and driving Humvees with no underside armor. And if their wives or kids get cancer their lives will be in the hands of some dastardly gov-contract HMO who will start by denying all but the most primitive treatment. The important part, however, is that this was the moment when I found myself advancing into what I understand used to be the old-time, Stalin-style, Ministry-of-Truth totalitarian mindset in which one believed absolutely nothing but the shreds of reality that could be gleaned from reading between the official lines. Hardly an original thought, but a sobering one that I'd reached that point, here in the Land of the Free.

The secret word is Deceive