No modern era has changed American life more than three events in the 12 months between February 2020 and February 2021—the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and the January 6 Capitol assault and riot. Yet in all three cases, legends, not facts still dominate.
Victor Davis Hanson "Many politicians at one point or another live by lies—if they can get away with them.
"Our supposed sentinels, the media—self-defined as independent, cynical, and skeptical journalists—are supposed to separate political fictions from truth.
Legends As Facts
"Of course, sometimes they used to do that—if only selectively. There were Communist sympathizers in the Roosevelt Administration and holdovers in the 1950s deep state. But the Red Peril was not always what the demagogic Joe McCarthy claimed when shaking his lengthy, indiscriminate “lists” of “commie” names and crimes.
"Once U.S. Army counsel Joseph Welch, Edward R. Murrow, and assorted journalists began to demand proof of all of McCarthy’s charges, his public following dissipated.
"The George W. Bush Administration in its case to remove Saddam Hussein unwisely ignored all the 23 bipartisan writs authorizing the use of the force by the Congress. Instead, it rhetorically bundled all congressional authorizations into one case against Saddam Hussein: the existential threat of huge Iraqi stockpiles of deliverable “weapons of mass destruction.”
"After Saddam’s removal, U.S. forces did not find depots of poisonous and nerve gases. Whether they were nonexistent, or moved stealthily to border dictatorships like Syria or even Iran, or were destroyed no one knew. The public only remembered the government assurance that WMDs, the popular justification for the preemptive invasion, would be there upon U.S. arrival—a narrative that the media originally did not question and then later swore that it always had been skeptical as it led the cheer: “Bush lied, people died.' ” . . .
Whether they were nonexistent, or moved stealthily to border dictatorships like Syria or even
