Hey, Junior! Facts Are Stupid Things!

Andrew Sullivan

14 Sep 2008 12:52 pm

Reading the "press" in this surreal climate right now, one is tempted to despair. I'm not giving in to it, because I still believe that the actual truth matters in the world. If propaganda could win in the end against truth, then Bush's approval ratings would be somewhere in the high 80s. They are in the lower 30s. In the end, the American people are not fools. And facts are facts. Right now, we are being subjected to an absolutely disorienting blizzard of lies and absurdities (Palin is a lying absurdity) from the McCain campaign. The idea is to so disorient people, to throw so many new concepts, brands, lies, images, marketing and distortions at them that they will not be able to focus on the issues in this election, and the real choices serious people have to make.

But facts are stubborn things, as someone once said.

In the end, the fact of no WMDs in Iraq is indisputable.

The fact that Bush appointed a know-nothing apparatchik to deal with hurricanes is unavoidable.

The fact that Bush made no serious preparations for occupying Iraq is clear as day.

The fact that he and his party have added $32 trillion to the debt of the next generation is now part of the global financial system.

The fact that the Bush administration effectively withdrew the United States from the Geneva Conventions and have legitimized the torture of prisoners across the world is empirically indisputable.

The fact that Bush has failed to stem Iran's growing nuclear capabilities is inescapable.

The fact that under George W. Bush, the country suffered its biggest attack in history, and the mass-murder of 3,000 people by religious fanatics, and that he was warned about this and did nothing is simply history.

The fact that in his presidency, the West missed a critical window of opportunity to develop new forms of energy and to wean ourselves off foreign oil is staring us in the face.

And the fact that after seven years, this president who once declared that he would get him dead or alive still has not apprehended the man who planned the 9/11 attacks is equally beyond dispute.

And the fact that under George W. Bush - far from finding and killing these monsters, we gave them a new sanctuary and did virtually nothing to stem or control the possible supply of WMDS to al Qaeda is equally indisputable. It is equally indisputable that only one individual has been successfully prosecuted in the war on terror and he will be out of jail soon enough, because the evidence that could have convicted him could not be introduced into a court of law.

In the end, whatever the power of the religious fundamentalist movement that is now the GOP in simply denying reality, reality wins. And the fact that John McCain is now a serial and shameless liar will also sink in. The question before us is not whether this will be one day understood to be true. The question is whether it will be flushed out in time.

We cannot control these despicable liars in the McCain campaign. We can only tell the truth as fearlessly and as relentlessly and as continuously as we can until November 4. We must do our duty. And if the American people want to re-elect the machine that has helped destroy this country's national security, global reputation and economic health, then that is their choice. But I am not so depressed to think that they will.

We must give them the truth. And that will feel like hell. And we must tell it like Truman told it: cheerfully, passionately and relentlessly.

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.