[29] News from Absurdistan - Fragments of Truth

Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it." - Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism.

Incidentally, our concept of [political legitimacy under] democracy is analogous to that of the totalitarian fabrication of "fact" explained by Hannah Arendt above: political legitimacy depends entirely on the power of the [majority-based] ruler who can fabricate it [by claiming the power of government to be legitimate by definition as it is derived from the "will" of the people].

Democracy, as we practice it, is just an excuse for the abuse of power, creating the egregious illusion that majority consent imparts to holders of unrestrained power the ability to act in compliance with "the will of the people" (what should that be? How can an abstraction have a will?) regarding millions of issues, most of which have not even been made known to the people nor subjected to a process of ascertaining popular consent. While of course popular consent as such is no guarantee of a reasonable course of action - like government, it must be subjected to the test of higher, enduring principles ensuring the protection of liberty.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” - Benjamin Franklin, 1759

For more, see my post from July 2007: "[13] News from Absurdistan - The Sun Queen of Germany", and http://www.democracyisnotfreedom.com/

As for the extreme contempt for facts regarding the planned attack on Iran, Lew Rockwell is right in writing:

...the elected Ahmadinejad, though a crazed Keynesian and other things, is no dictator, let alone a totalitarian one. He has far less power than Bush, for example, and is not even commander-in-chief of the Iranian military. And the notion that third-world Iran is a threat to nuclear powers America and Israel is laughable. Of course, so was the notion that Saddam Hussein was going to nuke the Bronx, but the booboisie believed it, thanks to the intellectuals who toed the line.