I am a subject in a kingdom of lies. At 57, I have grown up with decades of untruth — advanced for the purposes of purported social unity, the noble aim of egalitarianism, and the advancement of a cognitive elite in government, journalism, the arts, and the universities.
In the old Cold War days, the two major Russian newspapers were Izvestia (The News) and Pravda (The Truth). A joke of the period: There's no truth in the news and no news in the truth.
During the Cold War, the logic textbook used in the freshman philosophy course I took had this spoof example of a syllogism:
ReplyDelete1. Russian threats are no news.
2. No news is good news.
3. Therefore, Russian threats are good news.
Kind of surprising that a university textbook would admit that Russia issues "threats."
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