THE FIRST CASUALTY
They say truth is the first casualty of war.
But who exactly are the "they" who say this.
So far, I have found three candidates.
California's Republican Senator Hiram Johnson is reported in 1918 to have said "The first casualty when war comes is truth." Roughly 2500 years earlier, the Greek playwright Aeschylus ostensibly coined the phrase as a military maxim, though no one can actually find the place in which he coined it. Others give credit to Samuel Johnson's long-winded version in his November 11, 1758 essay in The Idler: "Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages."
Anytime someone these days says "they" or "some people" are saying or have said something, it is a good idea to figure out who exactly those "people" are and what exactly "they" said.
Like many duties imposed on us of late, this is one we owe to Donald Trump. Among his ubiquitous verbal tics is the now infamous "Some people are saying. . ." More often than not, however, it is followed by a fact-free fusillade of fabrication.
Or, in a word . . .
Lies.
Of our three "first casualty" candidates, it is probably best to eliminate Senator Johnson and Aeschylus as the original authors. At least it is probably best to do so if we are interested in using evidence as the basis for any claim of authorship. Though among the Senator's supporters the remark is supposed to have been said in 1918, there is no source reporting the comment by him at that time. The only document attributing those words to him is a February 1929 edition of the Local Engineers Journal, and the words themselves were in print in Philip Snowden's Truth and the War two years before the Senator ostensibly spoke them.
So . . .
Senator Johnson was probably quoting Snowden.
And unless Snowden had access to writings from Aeschylus that no one before or since has seen, Snowden was probably quoting -- or at the very least inspired by -- the other Johnson, a/k/a . . .
Dr. Samuel.
Dr. Johnson was a polymath. He was a poet, critic, biographer, historian and journalist. He wrote in Latin and English. By the time he wrote in The Idler, he had published his renowned A Dictionary of English Language. It set the standard for proper English until supplanted by the OED in 1928. It was also the reason Oxford (finally) gave him a degree.
As a boy, he travelled the economic ladder, his debt-ridden father having eventually put the family into poverty that only a timely inheritance remitted. As an adult, he suffered from Tourette's syndrome, though no one at the time knew it, and was saved from debtor's prison on more than one occasion by admiring (and generous) friends. What, however, was an unrequited burden to him may have turned out to be a benefit to us. The tics and outbursts that define the disease laid waste to so many job interviews that writing became a form of refuge. And, as his fame grew, it paid.
The November 1758 Idler essay is really about the creation of public ignorance. The bit about war and truth came at the end. The lion's share of the essay is a critique of the idleness of the rich and the idiocy that too often encourages. Johnson was a Tory, a devout Anglican, a monarchist and a loyal supporter of his King. He did not despise England's economic elite. He did, however, despise waste, especially of the intellectual sort.
"Money and time," he wrote, "are the heaviest burdens of life". The "unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use."
And so . . .
"To set himself free from these encumbrances, one hurries to Newmarket; another travels over Europe; one pulls down his house and calls architects about him; another buys a seat in the country, and follows his hounds over hedges and through rivers".
All this according to Johnson would be innocent enough were it left there.
But it isn't.
Because, as he put it . . .
"One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of close attention".
Every audience, of course, attracts its performers. Adam Smith's famous laws demand as much and Johnson -- a friend of Smith's -- knew this.
And so it was for those who sought to "read without fatigue".
They generated, according to Dr. Johnson, "writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read", the largest of whom were "writers of news" filling the pages of what in the middle of 18th century England were mushrooming numbers of morning and afternoon dailies and weeklies. A reader from this century might be forgiven for thinking Dr. Johnson that century's conservative unable to tolerate a free press. He wasn't. Puncturing egos and hypocrisy was his calling card, whether they came in the form of British and French imperialists (the "two robbers", he said, of Native American lands) or would-be American revolutionaries ("How is it," he asked "that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?").
What he couldn't tolerate was ignorance.
The product of those who wrote "not to be studied".
The drug for those who "read without fatigue".
At the end of his essay, Dr. Johnson tells us that "Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth." One reason for this is the natural inclination to take one's side, to praise one's soldiers and abhor the enemy. "In a time of war," he wrote, "the nation is always of one mind, eager to hear something good of themselves and ill of the enemy." Another, however, is the sheer "attention" war's embellished or one-sided "tale of cruelty" "awakens". "The writer of news," he said, "never fails in the intermissions of action to tell how the enemies murdered children and ravished virgins, and, if the scene of action be somewhat distant, scalps half the inhabitants of a province."
As I read (and re-read) Dr. Johnson's essay, I wondered whether today's wars fit his template.
In Ukraine and Gaza, the fit is imperfect.
Putin and Hamas are clearly offering their publics fictive justifications for wars each of them started. Their ""writers" are selling wars in which truth is more than the first casualty. It is a daily one. As for "tale[s] of cruelty," the "scene[s] of action" here are not remotely "distant". Cameras are there every day, 24/7. Ukraine does not need writers to invent cruelty. It is self-evident. And in Gaza, no one disputes the cruelty of civilian deaths. The issue is whether they can be avoided without insuring Hamas's survival and another attack.
Back here at home, however, Dr. Johnson’s warnings fit like a glove.
The world of "writers not to be studied" and those who "read without fatigue" is the world of America's 45th president.
Like the multiple morning, evening and weekly gazettes that in the 18th century replaced the single national newspaper Dr. Johnson knew for most of his life, our talk radio, cable and internet outlets have overwhelmed the professional journalism wrought by Adolph Ochs when he purchased The New York Times in 1896 and turned hitherto partisan print into an embarrassment.
And like the writers Dr. Johnson pilloried, with today's scriveners at FOX, OAN, Newsmax and the GOP twitterati, only "contempt of shame and indifference to truth are absolutely necessary." As Dr. Johnson put it centuries ago: "He who by long familiarity with infamy has obtained these qualities, may confidently tell today what he intends to contradict tomorrow; he may affirm fearlessly what he shall be obliged to recant".
Yesterday was Super Tuesday.
Presidential primaries were held in sixteen states
As predicted, Donald Trump ran the table in the Republican contests. He won fifteen states; Nikki Haley won Vermont and today suspended her campaign. Though her vote totals mean a sizeable percentage of GOP voters do not support Trump, and even suggest that a sizeable number of them will not vote for him come November, he will be the Republican party nominee.
A singular cancer, Trump and his enablers in Congress and the right-wing news media have injected three lies into a substantial segment of the American body politic:
1. That he, Trump, won the 2020 presidential election;
2. That Joe Biden, now 81, is mentally unable to serve a second term; and
3. That he, Trump, is the victim of a weaponized criminal and civil justice system that unfairly indicted him on ninety-one counts in four jurisdictions; unfairly fined him $450 million for financial fraud; and unfairly found him liable for sexual assault (and $83 million in damages).
As a corollary to these claims, Trump has convinced a substantial number of Republicans that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was some kind of "inside job" fomented by the deep state, that the hundreds of convicted January 6 defendants are really political hostages, and that Nancy Pelosi failed to call out the National Guard or accept protection that was offered.
All of these claims are false.
Trump lost. Biden is fit. The January 6 insurrection was an attempted coup that Trump advocated and refused to stop. The indictments are based on mountains of evidence from Republicans and Trump staffers and are to be tried in jurisdictions that cross the political spectrum. The civil verdicts follow full bench and jury trials, respectively, and are subject to appellate review of any error. And for its part, the jury that found Trump liable for sexual assault was selected from a venire that also crossed the political spectrum.
One of the signal characteristics of fascist or so-called "strongmen" states is the creation of false narratives and the use of mass media to mainstream lies and have the public accept them. This is what Mussolini did in Italy in the 1920s and Hitler did in Germany in the 1930s. It is also what Pinochet did in Chile in the 1970s and '80s and Putin is doing in Russia today.
Trump , FOX and their on-line and off-line imitators are following the same game plan.
There are three reasons Donald Trump has thus far survived politically.
The first is that the American institutions that could have taken him out have tragically refused to do so. The US Senate refused to convict him after he was impeached for the second time in January 2021 following his attempted coup, and the US Supreme Court refused to remove him from the ballot this week after a full and fair trial determined he was an oath-breaking insurrectionists barred from office under section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The former was an example of partisan political cowardice that itself knows no end; even Mitch McConnell, who in refusing to convict Trump still held him "practically and morally responsible" for January 6, today endorsed him. The latter re-wrote the 14th Amendment to make enforcement of its anti-insurrection clause dependent on Congressional action; with Trump and the current Congress, of course, that will never happen.
The second is that Trump and his co-conspirators have successfully followed the fascist approach to mass media. They have seized the media eco-system run by FOX et al., and that system has repeatedly broadcast and mainstreamed his lies. Absent such a megaphone, nowhere near the numbers who currently (and falsely) believe Trump won in 2020 or Biden is mentally unfit in 2024 would or could do so. Without radio, Hitler would have been a failed artist. Without FOX and social media, Trump would be a failed businessman.
The third is that other actors are being taken off the field more or less as a consequence of their own passivity. The biggest example of this is the mainstream media. They have literally allowed their love affair with an artificial definition of objectivity (i.e., report "both sides") to preclude a thorough search for and commitment to truth.
A believed lie is still a lie.
A violent insurrection and attempted coup does not become a mere protest turned unfortunate riot just because a lot of people have been brainwashed into thinking it was.
And a dereliction of presidential duty in refusing to stop that attack does not become less derelict because the narcissist in the White House supported the coup or was joined by lawyers advancing the blanketly illegal demand that a sitting vice president unilaterally refuse to count certified electoral votes.
In this contest against American fascism, no one gets to be neutral.
If you try to imitate Switzerland, we could wind up becoming Germany.
The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, other national newspapers, ABC, NBC and CBS should stop seeding Trump's lies.
It won't be that hard.
Instead of reporting on a poll announcing some enormous percentage thinks Biden mentally unfit (hardly a surprise inasmuch as they have been fed this for four years by Trump and his acolytes), they should talk to Biden's doctors, find out whether that is true (the doctors will tell you it isn't), report he is fit (because, in fact, he is), and play that back ad nauseum and absent the false "other" side until the lie is no longer believed.
Instead of spinning Nikki Haley's candidacy as a pointless tilt at the Trump windmill, they should cast it as the principled effort it was to stop the party of Lincoln from becoming the party of America's Adolf.
Instead of perfectly balanced powerhouse round tables with the de rigueur Republican apologist (like Reince Priebus), they should give Liz Cheney the spot. She is more than capable of representing any legitimate Republican views and more than willing to kill the illegitimate ones.
Finally, when it's over, they should turn off their cameras. After being assessed $450 million for financial fraud and $83 million for sexual assault, no other litigants in America would get to take free shots at the juries or judges who made those decisions. If Trump has complaints, that's what appeals are for.
My analogy to Trump as a form of political cancer was intentional. Lies metastasize. They make it difficult to discern any truth, not just the specific truth hidden or denied by the specific lie. And that is what is going on now with Trump and Republican partisans. He has so polluted the system that his followers are having difficulty accepting any facts.
President Biden will deliver his State of the Union tomorrow (he is delivering it in March rather than January because the House's petulant haters in the GOP refused to invite him until now, a Constitutional requirement that never use to cause a ruckus). He has a good story to tell. The economy is humming. Unemployment is at historic lows. Inflation has fallen pretty much back to the Fed's desired 2%. Crime is down and America’s infrastructure is being rebuilt. Biden was willing to shut the border and give the GOP almost all it wanted to tighten the asylum laws, but Republicans decided they would rather have an issue than a solution. So they now own the border crisis. To this can be added their ownership of the abortion/IVF crisis, as Alabama's judges turned frozen embryos into people after the Supreme Court gave them the go-ahead by overturning Roe, and their ownership of a crisis to be in the one they will create if they ever succeed in their goal of overturning Obamacare, which has now resulted in the all-time lowest percentage of Americans without health insurance.
Tomorrow, however, half of those sitting in the Capitol and at least 30-40% of those watching at home will believe all of this is a lie.
This reality is not a case of "both sides doing it".
As Paul Krugman pointed out last month, the macro-economic numbers today are close to where they were in 2019 when Trump was president riding high on the economy he inherited from Obama, and Democrats feel about as good about today's economy as they did about 2019's; Republicans, however, "have gone from euphoria about the economy under Donald Trump to a very jaundiced view under President Biden." From a different angle, the same is also true on crime. Locally, Republicans and Democrats have the same view on the "seriousness" of crime where they live and the vast majority (more than 80%) do not think it "extremely or very serious". Nationally, or where they don't live, the percentages who think it serious go up. For Republicans, however, that percentage is almost twice as high as for Democrats and approaches 80%.
This is a serious problem and it should not be consigned to the opinion pages of our newspapers.
The job of professional journalism is to report the news.
That job begins by . . .
Telling us the truth.
On the front page.
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