Hello Robert,
I agree with you that the titles of this book are appealing in themselves.
I see nothing wrong with reacting to the titles themselves before we read the book (I intend to read it too.)
First, of course what you write about politics and the American public applies to other countries.
Perhaps one question that can be raised is whether the Americann public is more gullible than the public in other countries, having for some reasons not lost as much faith in their leaders as we have. It seems that it takes something like a war that won't be won for opinion polls about the president to go down in the States. The function itself still brings a sort of aura to the person who is elected.
This is what was so superbly brought to life in George Orwell's
1984.
But it seems to me that the situation is sometimes more complex in twenty first century politics. The government creates confusion by lying and using other means than create fears.
For example, in France, the National Front will use actual facts to exaggerate and make people believe absurd stories about how much we have to fear.
The government will then fabricate their own lies and slogans to show us that that everyhting is in control and there is nothing to fear.
People will be angry for being lied to, and sometimes they remember at the next election and vote for the opposition-- but then they don't get no lies, they get lies about different topics, those which interest the new party in power.
The concept of admiring the most daring liars is again, unfortunately, not limited to the US.
In France there seems to be a grudging sense of admiration of people who have the audacity to lie so openly.
I think it comes form the sense that in business those are the people who are successful and will crush their competition. Who, after all, will make money by selling insurence policies that correspond to the needs of their customers?
Nowadays, being good at inventing a straightforward lie becomes a prerequisite for being accepted for interviews for postions of authority-- such as being a headmaster: they regularly tell candidates that they failed because they had no answer to a practical question (somehting like "What's the percentage of ?): they should have made up the answer, this is the attitude that is being promoted from the top down.
So if you pass the test, you can be admired for your aptitude of lying your way out of any situation. Obviously it doesn't matter that the people who work with you (in the case of a headmaster, his teachers) know that you lie about facts that can easily be checked and will not respect you.
Losing respect is felt to be much less important than always having an answer, and being admired by parents, who are the people who matter here and can't check the facts very easily.
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