“Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
Cheap lies become “faulty intelligence” and any reasonable doubt of ensuing policy – the call for war – is ascribed as sedition, “a validation of the enemy” – nothing short of treason.
When a nation justifies immoral acts through a self-proclaimed moral justification, too easily it becomes the truth that is the enemy, and to whom treason has been committed. Self-deception on the grandest scale.
Four years later, down the rabbit hole we have ventured, and none can find a way out.