Those are completely different: before Trump the security services (the modern euphemisms for "spies" and "political police") spread propaganda and lies in the interests of the USA ruling class as a whole, currently and very dangerously the security services are spreading party-political propag…
Those are completely different: before Trump the security services (the modern euphemisms for "spies" and "political police") spread propaganda and lies in the interests of the USA ruling class as a whole, currently and very dangerously the security services are spreading party-political propaganda, trying to influence elections on a massive scale not in protectorates like Venezuela or England or south Korea, but in the USA itself. They no longer act as tools of the state, but are acting as principals.
«ushered in this new era, in which there is no objective truth or historical record to appeal to, and nobody is expected to hold consistent principles.»
That is quite wrong: it not a new era. My usual quotes:
T Jefferon letter to W Jones, 1814: “I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them: and I inclose you a recent sample, the production of a New-England judge, as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. these ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste, and lessening it’s relish for sound food. as vehicles of information, and a curb on our functionaries they have rendered themselves useless by forfieting all title to belief.”
G Orwell, "Looking Back on the Spanish War", 1943: “Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie.
I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.”
«But Russiagate (and the WMD/Iraq War scam)»
Those are completely different: before Trump the security services (the modern euphemisms for "spies" and "political police") spread propaganda and lies in the interests of the USA ruling class as a whole, currently and very dangerously the security services are spreading party-political propaganda, trying to influence elections on a massive scale not in protectorates like Venezuela or England or south Korea, but in the USA itself. They no longer act as tools of the state, but are acting as principals.
«ushered in this new era, in which there is no objective truth or historical record to appeal to, and nobody is expected to hold consistent principles.»
That is quite wrong: it not a new era. My usual quotes:
T Jefferon letter to W Jones, 1814: “I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them: and I inclose you a recent sample, the production of a New-England judge, as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. these ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste, and lessening it’s relish for sound food. as vehicles of information, and a curb on our functionaries they have rendered themselves useless by forfieting all title to belief.”
G Orwell, "Looking Back on the Spanish War", 1943: “Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie.
I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.”