Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Long before Wikileaks...

...there was the Pentagon Papers:
The New York Times begins (June 13, 1971) to publish sections of the so-called "Pentagon Papers," a top-secret Department of Defense study of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. The papers indicated that the American government had been lying to the people for years about the Vietnam War and the papers seriously damaged the credibility of America's Cold War foreign policy.
This was not the first, nor last, time the government mislead the people it supposedly serves.  The revelation did not result in a recomittment to transparency; rather, it drove such calculated dissonance further underground. 
Vietnam. Iraq. Remaining in Afghanistan.  Posturing for war with Iran.  Poll after poll shows the division between the views of those inside the Beltway and the rest of America who pays the bills.
So in what sense can we say we have 'representative government?'

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