by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n I\u00a0am a subject in a kingdom of lies. At 57, I have grown up with decades of untruth \u2014 advanced for the purposes of purported social unity, the noble aim of egalitarianism, and the advancement of a cognitive elite in government, journalism, the arts, and the universities.<\/p>\n Alger Hiss really was a communist operative, albeit an elegant and snooty sort of one. The Rosenbergs were tag-team spies. Noble Laureate Rigoberta Menchu did not really write her own memoir. I admire the lives of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, even as I sensed there were large areas\u00a0of their biographies<\/a>\u00a0[1] that simply could not be disclosed and that the censorship was apparently for our own good. I know that if I did what Eliot Spitzer did I would not be hosting a TV show.<\/p>\n I did not quite know how \u201cwitch hunt\u201d characterized the often disreputable tactics of Joe McCarthy \u2014 cruel and obnoxious were the better adjectives. You see, there were really communists in Hollywood at a time of a dangerous global cold war against communism, in a way there were never any witches at all in Salem.<\/p>\n But then for some reason I sensed that a murderous, camouflaged Fidel Castro killed more innocents than a murderous, gold-braided Augusto Pinochet. I accepted that we were to be silent about the former\u2019s crimes since his ends were said to be good, while the latter\u2019s crimes were for the bad \u2014 though economists of no particular political affiliations have shown that Chileans escaped poverty and dictatorship while Cubans were, and are still, plagued by both.<\/p>\n As far as Hollywood, goes, as I have said, I do not go to the cinema at all. The choices are meager. We can watch a George Clooney, Matt Damon, or Ben Affleck \u2014 multimillionaires all of mediocre talent \u2014 uncover some corporate or CIA conspiracy that threatens the environment (their employers and distributors are not corporate?), the non-white male, or global peace \u2014 or sit through yuppie crises whose double entendres and cute repartees are known mostly only to metrosexuals between New York and D.C., or from Malibu to Newport Beach. We are told they are films, but those too are lies; they are mere transcripts of the daily psychodramas of a privileged and bored class whose efforts are spent searching for global causes\u00a0that might balance<\/a>\u00a0[2] \u2014 as penance if you will \u2014 their own often angst-driven quests for influence, notoriety, and the material good life.<\/p>\n The media is our ministry of truth of the Oceania brand: one day Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventive detention, Predators, the Patriot Act, and Iraq were bad; then one day in January 2009 I woke up and\u00a0heard of them not all bad<\/a>\u00a0[3]. I then recognized that they were now either good or at least necessary \u2014 or perhaps sinister IEDs of a sort left behind by the nefarious Emmanuel Goldstein administration, now too dangerous to even touch.<\/p>\n The Goldstone Report<\/a>\u00a0[4], I thought when I first scanned it, was worse than most undergraduate research papers I have graded \u2014 and therefore I expected it to be praised by the international community. And it was until even the author, like the rare guilty undergraduate who confesses to plagiarism, wants his signature off the report. But then long ago I got used to Israel being damned by reporters, NGOs, and the UN and EU types as apartheidists, racists, imperialists, and Nazis in direct proportion to the fact that visitors to the Middle East usually prefer to go Israeli cafes, hotels, and hospitals. Reporting on the West Bank is a 10 AM-2 PM day job, with a commute back across the green line. Half a million Jews ethnically cleansed in the 1960s from Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus were opportunists; half a million who fled to the West Bank twenty years earlier are still recently arrived refugees. But then I don\u2019t know why Jerusalem is a divided city and Nicosia is not; or why the Kuril Islands or East Prussia are not similarly said to be \u201coccupied\u201d; or why the fence in Israel is worse than the fence in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n I have no idea whether invading in preemptive fashion an oil-producing, Arab Muslim country without congressional approval is an impeachable or humanitarian act \u2014 or both. You see, it depends, in the manner that\u00a0Trotsky\u2019s photo<\/a>\u00a0[5] used to, and then did not used to, appear in the snapshots of the Soviet pantheon. I suppose the same is true about prisoner abuse. I remember traveling in Europe and seeing those eerie black Klan-like hoods and capes with all sort of French, Italian and German sloganeering about the atrocious sexual humiliation that took place at Abu Ghraib, but I imagine this summer there won\u2019t be much about supposed transgressions in Afghanistan where civilians were supposed to have been executed rather than humiliated. Things just happen, I suppose, in wars after 2009 \u2014 like now in Libya too.<\/p>\n I also have a sense, although it has never been quite so ordered by the Ministry, that a nut burning a bible is either artistic expression or a proper antidote to centuries of repression and so to be either applauded or ignored; but a nut burning a Koran evokes decapitations and murder and does so quite understandably \u2014 although I am never told quite why. Does it involve liberal paternalism and condescension: millions of Muslim radicals are\u00a0captives of emotion<\/a>\u00a0[6] and ignorant and thus not \u201clike us,\u201d so we must create much different standards for \u201cthem\u201d that we don\u2019t apply to others? We as adults laugh when symbols of Christianity are defaced in thousands of incidents; they as children naturally and understandably kill when one Koran is burned by one silly wannabe minister? Or is the Ministry\u2019s fear that when Christ is satirized in a cartoon, no bomb shows up at the editorial office; when Mohammed is so caricatured, two do \u2014 and that because reporters are said always to be brave and publishers principled we cannot just admit to that?<\/p>\n I think I also understand that the support for 11 million illegal aliens arriving here from Mexico without English, legality, or education is not fueled by tribal and ethnic chauvinism. I know that to suggest that extending immigration consideration to a new cadre of 11 million Koreans, Chinese, Africans, and Europeans with graduate degrees and capital would be racist to the core. The former group from Oaxaca is diverse, the latter from almost everywhere illiberal. I have seen those demonstrating for amnesty deprecate the US and its flag while championing Mexico, and I think I am supposed to understand that screaming at the country you wish to stay in, while singing praises for the country you do not makes perfect non-sense, in Humpty-Dumpty word fashion. And I know I am not supposed to say that, much less explain why millions flee here from a temperate and fertile south and not from an Arctic north.<\/p>\n I know that UC Berkeley is worried about diversity since blacks and Latinos are underrepresented (as are whites) while Asians are vastly \u201coverrepresented.\u201d And I think I understand how such proportional representation will eventually be achieved by various ministries, and all contrary to state law: the underrepresented whites will be assumed to be overrepresented, the Asians will be quietly and insidiously pruned back by considering \u201ccommunity service\u201d in preference to grades and test scores, and far more African-Americans and Latinos will be admitted by rejecting unfair criteria such as meaningless grades and test scores \u2014 and that all this \u2014 not science or the humane arts \u2014 will be mostly the business of the architects of undergraduate education. The alternatives? They are too ghastly to contemplate. Just let things alone, and the underrepresented communities will decide on their own why they are not going to college in sufficient numbers, and take self-help measures to the degree they see it as a problem \u2014 or shrug and admit that the ministries are using archaicneo-Confederate racial criteria<\/a>\u00a0[7] in a mixed-up, intermarried world where one needs a genealogist to plot one\u2019s precise racial ancestry.<\/p>\n I think I have it right that conservative Republican white guys are selfish and greedy, and therefore a liberal Bill Gates or George Soros made their billions by enlightened, or green, or socially useful methods. Did BP and Goldman Sachs really favor Barack Obama? Will they again? Were Freddie and Fannie really looted by Clintonites? Did GE\u00a0pay no taxes<\/a>\u00a0[8]? Is there still a revolving door in Washington where a Robert Gibbs, of no discernible talent, or a Peter Orszag, who nearly wrecked the economy with massive deficit spending, are now poised to become progressive multimillionaires?<\/p>\n Is making millions from Facebook, or GM, or GE now fine in a way it is not from the Koch Brothers? Again, these are just the thoughts of someone trying to read between the lines of the Oceania censors. (So we are to think the Tea Partiers are the greedy reactionary and wealthy, and the millionaire donors\u00a0targeted by the Obama reelection<\/a>[9] committee merely generous?)<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what \u201cinvestments\u201d and \u201cstimulus\u201d mean. Do any of you? I think they refer to borrowing over $500 billion for a particular green or mass transit project. But then I don\u2019t know what \u201cgreen\u201d means either, and for that matter don\u2019t know what is the difference between \u201cglobal warming\u201d and \u201cclimate change\u201d \u2014 other than earthquakes and tsunamis sometimes count under the latter, as do cyclones and hail storms. I do know that when I go to the Sierra tomorrow to shovel 15 feet of March snow off a porch I am supposed to assume these last two\u00a0record winters of heavy snowfall<\/a>\u00a0[10] had something to do with climate change. After all, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu warned that 90% of the Sierra snowpack will one day disappear and my farm, like all the others, will blow away \u2014 and that apparently somehow, some way, sometimes too much snow is just part of that drying out process.<\/p>\n As far as \u2018kinetic\u201d and \u201cman-caused disasters\u201d and \u201coverseas contingency operations,\u201d I think they have something do with killing terrorists. I also assume those who do fight the bad guys do not employ such euphemisms, which are for our, not their, consumption. We, the administered to, live in a\u00a0\u201cdownright mean\u201d<\/a>\u00a0[11] country; our administers go to Costa del Sol in summer and Vail in winter on the mean country\u2019s dime.<\/p>\n In this kingdom of lies, this Oceania of the mind, I, a subject of the monarchy of untruth, navigate carefully, assuming what I read and see is simply not true \u2014 and cannot be said to be untrue. Last week at the Post Office, a rather well-dressed young man in line was explaining to me that he was wondering why his unemployment check had not come to his PO Box. And then he further offered that he is now negotiating, or rather hoping, for his unemployment to be extended beyond his second year. I smiled and said, \u201cThat\u2019s wonderful, because I know you are not working off the books for cash, and I know you are looking for a job all day long, and I know that if your benefits ever end, you will not suddenly find work.\u201d<\/p>\n The odd thing was that he laughed and thought those were lies too.<\/p>\n URLs in this post: \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I\u00a0am a subject in a kingdom of lies. At 57, I have grown up with decades of untruth \u2014 advanced for the purposes of purported social unity, the noble aim of egalitarianism, and the advancement of a cognitive elite in government, journalism, the arts, and the universities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[145],"tags":[207,258,743,405,94,1069,480,327,1031,704,1044,468,1060],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Sg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9730,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/9730-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":3364,"position":0},"title":"From an Angry Reader: Your\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From an Angry Reader: Your opinions are about as nutty as the incoming administration and fake news as well as Trump's constant spins\/basic lies. Let mainstream media and journalism in general do their job and ask the hard questions that need to be answered. We are just plain lucky the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9917,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/talk-radio-cable-news-the-mainstream-media-and-the-news-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":3364,"position":1},"title":"Talk Radio, Cable News, the Mainstream Media, and the News Revolution","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review In the hubbub over Trump\u2019s attack on the media, we sometimes forget that Barack Obama et al. customarily went after talk-radio and cable-news conservatives \u2014 whose job, after all, was opinion journalism \u2014 as biased, whereas Trump went\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6052,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-brief-history-of-media-bias\/","url_meta":{"origin":3364,"position":2},"title":"A Brief History of Media Bias","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Who said that newspapers are supposed to report the news in an objective and fact-based way? by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas The revelation that the Department of Justice acquired and read the phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters does not change the obvious fact that the mainstream\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9688,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-trump-nail-in-the-media-coffin\/","url_meta":{"origin":3364,"position":3},"title":"The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin","author":"Megan Ring","date":"January 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ Town Hall | President-elect Donald Trump probably will not often communicate with the nation via traditional press conferences. Nor will Trump likely field many questions from New York\/Washington journalists.What we know as \"the media\" never imagined a Trump victory. It has become unhinged at the reality\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.townhall.com\/townhall\/reu\/ha\/2016\/356\/8ea9ea18-4f78-4127-92a8-b6fa0321f3dc.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13140,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/eeyores-cabinet-noble-lies\/","url_meta":{"origin":3364,"position":4},"title":"Eeyore’s Cabinet: Noble Lies?","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 13, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers Americans are being saturated by a whirlwind of events never quite seen in recent memory. When a person with a gun or car now kills someone, the media\u2014in anti-humanistic fashion, and quite callously\u2014 massages the story to fit deductive narratives. And they are based\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 8 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 8 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/eeyores-cabinet-noble-lies\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/NobleLies2.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/NobleLies2.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/NobleLies2.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/NobleLies2.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/NobleLies2.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/NobleLies2.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11819,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/journalism-is-dead-long-live-the-media\/","url_meta":{"origin":3364,"position":5},"title":"Journalism is Dead\u2014Long Live the Media!","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 13, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness There still exists a physical media in the sense of airing current events. But it is not journalism as we once understood the disinterested reporting of the news. Journalism is now dead. The media lives on. Reporters today believe that their coverage serves higher\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media"","block_context":{"text":"Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3365,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364\/revisions\/3365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n[1] of their biographies:http:\/\/replay.waybackmachine.org\/20090226171138\/http:\/\/history.eserver.org\/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt<\/a>
\n[2] that might balance:\u00a0http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2009\/06\/05\/richard-dreyfuss-discovers-his-mini-me<\/a>
\n[3] heard of them not all:\u00a0http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/victordavishanson\/the-rise-of-the-uncouth\/?singlepage=true<\/a>
\n[4] The Goldstone Report:\u00a0http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/ronradosh\/2011\/04\/02\/judge-richard-goldstones-stunning-re-evaluation-a-partial-apologia-but-one-that-comes-at-the-right-time<\/a>
\n[5] Trotsky\u2019s photo:\u00a0http:\/\/www.tc.umn.edu\/~hick0088\/classes\/csci_2101\/false.html<\/a>
\n[6] captives of emotion:\u00a0http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/instapundit\/117906<\/a>
\n[7] neo-Confederate racial criteria:http:\/\/old.nationalreview.com\/interrogatory\/interrogatory121602.asp<\/a>
\n[8] pay no taxes:\u00a0http:\/\/ace.mu.nu\/archives\/313868.php<\/a>
\n[9] targeted by the Obama reelection:http:\/\/hotair.com\/headlines\/archives\/2011\/04\/03\/obama-earnestly-seeking-out-big-money-donors-whom-we-once-criticized<\/a>
\n[10] record winters of heavy snowfall:http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2010\/12\/19\/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past<\/a>
\n[11] \u201cdownright mean\u201d:\u00a0http:\/\/newsbusters.org\/blogs\/noel-sheppard\/2008\/03\/05\/michelle-obama-america-just-downright-mean<\/a><\/p>\n