Cool quote from Walter Lippmann

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Towards the end of that Washington Post article about Sec. of Defense Cohen and the war/terrorism threat, we read:

Mere months before the attack on Pearl Harbor shocked America out of its slumber, Walter Lippmann wrote, "Millions will listen to, and prefer to believe, those who tell them that they need not rouse themselves, and that all will be well if only they continue to do all the pleasant and profitable and comfortable things they would like to do best."

Human nature never changes, does it? The greater the risk, the greater the denial.

Somehow I can't imagine any of today's celebrity/jouralists having the balls/brains to say something as brutally honest as Lippmann's observation.

I'm mean, hell, it'll take Dan Rather at least six months to get over his severe case of KTH (Kennedy tragedy heartbreak). Who has any emotional energy left to report on a silly computer problem, especially when no one wants to hear it?

(Is that the sound of planes I hear off in the distance on this lovely Hawaiian Sunday morning?)

-- rick blaine (y2kazoo@hotmail.com), July 27, 1999

Answers

The Japanese would NEVER be so stupid as to attack the United States. Are you crazy? They know our power and what we would do if they did that. That will never happen in a million years!!!

(Oh yes, and the Japanese say, "When we liberate the Hawaiian Islands, the Japanese Americans will run out and help us."

Author of PACIFIC EMPIRE, an alternate history of the war in the Pacific--on last summer's NYTimes Reading list.

-- g miki hayden (gmh222222@aol.com), July 27, 1999.


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