The Danger Of Believing One's Own Propaganda

In his new column, “Friendship And The GOP’s Touched Reality,” Gene Lyons implores us to remember the distinction between caricatures and human beings:

Like sex, politics makes almost everybody stupid. With a presidential election in the offing, Americans are increasingly inclined to divide into rival tribes contemptuous of the “other.” It often seems that the higher the stakes, the more foolish the national dialogue.

Sometimes it feels as if we’re living in Jonathan Swift’s Lilliput, with Big-Endians perennially at war with Little-Endians over the proper way to open a soft-boiled egg. Of course, Swift himself engaged in furious political and religious controversy all his life. He could also laugh at himself.

But hold that thought.

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Beyond Bakhmut's Destruction, The News From Ukraine Is Mostly Good

Patriot missile launcher firing rocket

Yevgeny Prighozin announced yesterday that his Wagner Group mercenaries had “taken” Bakhmut from Ukrainian forces. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired right back from the meeting of the G-7 in Japan: “Bakhmut is not occupied by Russian Federation as of today. There are no two or three interpretations of those words.” But he went on to compare the damage he saw in photos at the Hiroshima memorial to what has happened to Bakhmut, where nearly every structure inside the town limits has been either destroyed or severely damaged.

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