Ch. 11 - Public Life: Defining Dumbness Downward
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:07 am
Ch. 11 - Public Life: Defining Dumbness Downward
Please use this thread for discussing Chapter 11.
Please use this thread for discussing Chapter 11.
Quality books. Great conversations.
https://www.booktalk.org/
This is what was so superbly brought to life in George Orwell's 1984."The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. "
The concept of admiring the most daring liars is again, unfortunately, not limited to the US.The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth
(Susan Jacoby) was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.
Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day's horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:
"This is just like Pearl Harbor," one of the men said.
The other asked, "What is Pearl Harbor?"
"That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War," the first man replied.
At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, "I decided to write this book."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html