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TOWN CRIERS - excellent title, re-enforcing the central premise that propagandists have managed to sway people into mindsets that support political policies that are ultimately self-destructive. It gives historical perspective, even as the criers have come to embrace posted scrolls, newspapers, radio, television, internet blogs and ever-evolving tools.

The phrase that jmacusa felt compelled to comment on: “Several atomic bombs had already been dropped”, does immediately pop out, but it is obvious that it was a passing burble in your thought stream, skipped quickly by, not meant to be literal and certainly to be corrected if you had time to re-read. (I know the passion to get the article OUT, as opposed to painstaking editorial quibbles). It is more than made up for, IMHO by the following line:

“And in the final irony, the transmitter which had for so long managed control of the population through embargo of any bad news, and tortuous twisting of what remained into pure fantasy... found itself broadcasting the stark reality of the downfall of a way of life.”

...a definitive impact sentence, written with a poetic turn.

It has always been curious (at least to me), just what the Japanese military leaders thought to gain by stopping the truth from being broadcast. IF we didn’t have the bomb, they could have made a case that we wouldn’t have been willing to pay the price in human lives to subdue Japan - thus letting them sue for peace terms with a stronger hand and therefore (to them) a greater modicum of honor. But with the atomic bomb, we could have scoured their islands of all life; there would have been NO Japanese race left - this I believe the Emperor realized. As the people regarded him as a god (and god will only allow victory), then god HAD to speak...and explain REALITY. How can their race’s genocide be more acceptable to the Japanese War Ministers than the repudiation of Bushido pride?

The identification of Kings and Emperors as gods or as having god-like qualities is particularly insidious. When coupled with destructive policies, it has led to drastic results time-and-again throughout history, from even before Egypt’s Pharaohs and continuing through today. (Mark how Barack Obama was marketed as a Messiah by the Liberal Criers - I guess that would make Jeremiah Wright his John the Baptist, oh my). People programmed to regard bizarre national policies as acceptable because of their leader’s unerring godliness are then led to ruin time after time.

You are right that people are invested in the ideas and their representative; to admit that things are wrong and must be changed is a repudiation of themselves. Liberals and Socialists are terrible in this regard. Even though socialist policies have been proven unworkable and against human nature, they keep saying that THEY will make them right. But that is only some - there are also those in power who KNOW the policies do not work and work to stay in power, until they themselves draw out the long knives and make “corrections”.

This is a good story, that forces one to make comparisons with our paralleled current events. The avalanche of debt is trembling, waiting for the quiet, sorrowful sighs of insolvency to trigger and bury us. This may well be end of America as a great nation, that is, if we can even manage to stay a nation. And then there will be the great gnashing of teeth and cries of woe, as we all become the terrible pun of your title.