Priam’s Daughter: Note from Weimar

A Note From Weimar:  “’Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst,’ [Hannah Arendt  wrote], ‘no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.’  This mixture of gullibility and cynicism, Arendt suggested, thrived in times rife with change and uncertainty, and was exploited by politicians intent on creating a fictional world in which ‘failures need not be recorded, admitted, and remembered. ‘  In this world, 2 +2 does = 5, as Orwell noted, and the acceptance of bad arithmetic simply becomes a testament to the powers of rulers to define reality and the terms of debate.”  [From Michiko Kakutani, Critic’s Notebook, NY Times, January 27, 2017]