Repeat a lie often enough, the conventional Nazi propaganda wisdom ran, and it will become an accepted truth.
This last Veterans Day weekend, I couldn’t watch a sporting event, listen to a car radio, or even go shopping at the local grocery store without hearing a Great American Lie repeated over and over.
Sports announcers, radio talk-show hosts, commercials, and even a recorded voice blasted into the aisles of the HyVeee supermarket told me again and again that I owed my great American “freedom” to veterans and current enlistees of the U.S. military – in other words, to the Pentagon.
We are free to attend football and basketball games, I was told, because of our military veterans, thanks to the U.S. military.
We get to go shopping, the recorded voice at HyVee instructed me, because of “our” military. So “thank a veteran.”
Leaving my local grocery store last Sunday, I almost expected to see U.S. Marines guarding the perimeter of the parking lot so that terrorists couldn’t slaughter grateful citizens as we tried to purchased provisions. Was that an Army Rangers team in the frozen foods section?