“…This Noble Lie transferred billions from America’s social needs into the pockets of the military-industrial complex, at the same time that the complex made a lunge for the remaining oil supplies of the Arab world. It even made the U.S. population so complicit in the lie, that U.S. citizens did not refuse to be sent abroad to die for it.
The most frightening aspect of Big Lies is that deceptions this large do not just have one lie, but levels of lies, nested lies, residing within one another like Russian dolls, with the lie changing at every level. The outer-most doll heard about weapons of mass destruction. The next doll in heard about spreading democracy. The next in heard about big money contracts for war-industry cronies. Even farther in, was the story that the majority of Iraqi oil went to Germany and Japan, economic competitors of the U.S., who could be crippled by shutting off the spigot. I have no idea what the innermost lie was, but I am sure it was a doozie. People cooperate with nested lies because they allow the people telling the Noble Lies actually to believe that, unlike the rest of us schlubs, they know the real skinny—when they do not…”
