To Tell the Truth...

Yesterday I discussed my concerns of allowing populist commentators/politicians lead us into the abyss of a narrow-minded world view of the uneducated masses.

I made reference to H.L. Mencken and the paradoxical drive on the part of the masses to believe liars and despise those that tell the truth.

It has been brought to my attention that the "other demagogic leaders of the not-so-distant past" line was understood to mean GW. No, my connection was to the original mass-media demagogue Mr Hitler.

He was a major proponent of the the "Bigger Lie" school of political rhetoric. His experience was that the bigger, the more outrageous a lie, the more he was held in reverence.

This was my major concern in my post on the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine under President Reagan. I am convinced that FoxNews, and many (conservative- but not only conservative)commentators have studied Mr Hitler's electoral success and have gleaned aspects from it to suit their own purposes.

And in the event that anyone should think I am only criticising the U.S., let me remind you of the story of the former President of Germany Mr Horst Koehler.

He resigned recently after inadvertently speaking the truth about the use of the German military abroad. Specifically he said that the Bundeswehr was a tool of German foreign policy to protect and extend its economic interests. In Afghanistan for instance.

To be fair it is not entirely clear what the German public actually thought about Mr Koehler's comments. The media got a hold of them-they emanated from an interview on his official airplane returning from Afghanistan-and castigated him incessantly for having blundered so, resulting in his almost immediate resignation.

The message was that if you tell the truth you will get in trouble as a politician. I wish that we could return to a time-if that ever existed, where we expect our politicians to tell us the truth. We could listen to their electioneering and actually make decisions predicated on what they say, and what they intend to do.

Of course markets move and so there needs to be a reasonable amount of flexibility allowed our politicians to perhaps deviate from their stated paths. But in these instances a clear explanation is in order, and a realisation that we put faith in our initial vote, and then we have to allow our politicians the scope to try and fulfill their mandates.