A Portentious quote?

[Comadreja]

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth: Henry Louis Mencken: American humorous journalist, 1880-1956

Perhaps we can only hope that the NeoCon Mafia's lies are just too clumsy to be admirably "daring."

"Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies...."

[indigobusiness]

1. Humans are a mystery

wrapped in a riddle.

[chiburb]

2. Or this one:

"If you make people think they are thinking, they will love you. If you REALLY make them think, they will hate you".

Blaise Pascal

[Wright Patman]

3. And to think

at the start of the 20th Century, there were actually people who believed in humanism and the perfectibility of human nature.

The fundies themselves--and there are tens of millions of them in this country alone--should convince even the most dewy-eyed, optimistic Enlightenment thinker that the human race will always contain a "critical mass" of the population which will render such utopian efforts impossible to achieve.

The human race is highly adaptable, but I'm not the most optimistic soul out there. I don't see it surviving in its current civilization (such as it is) much longer.

I certainly don't see this "freedom" * is always talking about. Trends are in the other direction. Freedom in the sense Orwell used the term maybe.

[loyalsister]

4. Absolutely

This comes from Dr. Goebbels playbook of "Big Lies." He said the "bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed."
I really think it's a matter of what people are willing to believe based on how it relates to themselves.
For example, Americans do not want to believe that their own government would lie to them about something as serious as getting us into a war over a lie. "We are better than that." I think would be the common belief.
The believe it would jeopardize their well being and their self perception to some extent. They would have to consider the possibility that America is not the greatest county on Earth.
Since a lie to get us into a war is serious enough to shake their own reality, there is no way they are willing to believe it. The best alternative they have is that *co is telling the truth.
A small lie, however, such as one about sex may expose DISHONESTY!!! It's about the guy not the country.
The idea that they have been lied to about 9/11 is something they won't even touch- yet.