Things don't really change...

I was listening to Al Gore being interviewed by Keith Olbermann this evening on Countdown. Al was making the point that Bush manipulating and lying to get us into his long-desired war was bad enough, but that the really scary part is how the public, and especially the media, ignored the real facts and completely failed to employ any sort of critical reasoning. Keith (who I am really digging these days) wondered if there was any hope for the majority of this country. Can we do anything to get our countrymen to even read Al's book, let alone implement the ideas Al offers to save our democracy? I wonder the same thing -- it seems to me that the public conscience and discourse have descended from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to American Idol and Britney Spears' cooter. That made me think about a quote that I haul out every once in a while, which pretty much illustrates what I'm getting at here:

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a facist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in every country.

-Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshal at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II.