"It's as though we are evil."

I've been an admirer of Gore Vidal for a long time. Today, Frank Ford sent me the transcript of an interview of Vidal published in The Progressive magazine. I want to give you a quote from that:

We’ve never had a government like this. The United States has done wicked things in the past to other countries but never on such a scale and never in such an existentialist way. It’s as though we are evil. We strike first. We’ll destroy you. This is an eternal war against terrorism. It’s like a war against dandruff. There’s no such thing as a war against terrorism. It’s idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It’s advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.

But our media has collapsed. They’ve questioned no one. One of the reasons Bush and Cheney are so daring is that they know there’s nobody to stop them. Nobody is going to write a story that says this is not a war, only Congress can declare war. And you can only have a war with another country. You can’t have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids. Nothing makes any sense, and the people are getting very confused. The people are not stupid, but they are totally misinformed... [Our leaders] don’t want us to know anything. When you’ve got a press like we have, you no longer have an informed citizenry.

Yes, the ignorance of the American people is appalling. The only thing that will make a difference is if enough of us keep saying so.