A Lie By Any Other Name

"I am amazed you do not see what weighty work we do."

• Arthur Miller, The Crucible

Long after Adolph Hitler...
Long after World War II...
Long after the fall of the Nazi Party....

The monstrous propaganda machine of Joseph Goebbels whirs on, never stopping, never slowing. Here we sit some 80 years after the death of the man who fueled the "Final Solution," and his dark works become more than a footnote in history. In fact, the great machine has continued to work in the shadows, choosing new targets and new masters, but remaining in full control of the hearts and minds of the people.

Today, we see no hand creating the narrative, at least not in the way the lens of history shows us Goebbels. No, today we see only the output, the disease that ravages the very core of our society, that makes such men as Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump into figureheads of hate and pestilence so worshipped that they are made into something somehow greater than the tiny men of fear and anger and impotence that they really are.

While there is blame, of course, to be laid at the feet of the media conglomerates that spoon-feed ideology to the intentionally uneducated masses who will continue to vote for the enforcement of their own ignorance by virtue of not knowing any better, the blame also falls upon us all.

We've propagandized ourselves into a culture of false dichotomies. We've drawn a line of black and white, good versus evil, and donned glasses so colored by our ideological anchors that we allow the full scope of human activity that exists in the grey to go unseen and unchecked.

We've fostered the arrogant notion that if we cannot make earthshattering, immediate change, that change is not possible, because the increments by which change has always occurred cannot satisfy our vanity or our ego enough to be a worthwhile pursuit.

One nation. Divided. Is it destined to fall?