We are willfully misinformed

"A lie, repeated often enough, becomes the truth" is an old saying. Watch it in operation:

Washington (AP, March 27) - Emboldened by their deadly success in Spain, terrorists could attempt to influence the U.S. election and shock the world by launching attacks during this year's presidential nominating conventions or at the Olympics in Greece, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Thursday.

"We understand that between now and the election, there is a window of time in which terrorists may well wish to influence events, whether it's in the United States or overseas," Mueller said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Did you catch the lie? If you didn't, it means it's already penetrating.

No, not the second paragraph. That's merely silly unless you want to suggest a time when terrorist groups would not be interested in influencing events. It's purpose, rather, is to maintain a sense of constant danger, the better to keep people in line and achieve the goals of the guardians, including full reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which Mueller said the FBI supports.

The lie is in the very first phrase: "emboldened by their deadly success in Spain." That is, it now is supposed to be just an accepted fact, an unquestioned reality, that the bombings in Madrid were undertaken for the purpose of electing Zapatero and that Spanish voters tossed Aznar because they were frightened by the attack.

That is simply not true. I've gone through all the reasons before, including that the real deciding factor seems not to have been the bombing but public anger over the Aznar government's deceptive, politically-driven response to it.

But truth doesn't matter when there's right-wing conventional wisdom to be promoted.

Willfully ignorant and misinformed when we do try to pay attention. We are seriously screwed.