The Election of Abraham Lincoln

[Starry Messenger]

13. Yeah, I've seen some of that kooky Bircher stuff too.

In the specific case I was thinking of, the right-winger explicitly wrote that Lincoln was displaying Bolshevik tendencies by helping to end slavery, that it was "big government interference", the market would have ended slavery (ha!), etc.

The fights between the different capitalist gangs are usually why we have large-scale warfare. They use the rest of us to fight each other. They also write the textbooks.

Sifting for accurate information and correlating it is a full-time job. Orwell in fact is an interesting example. Despite his criticism of "totalitarianism", he was an intelligence informer himself. I was just talking last month with an anti-fascist WW2 vet who said that if the US had spent money to arm the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, WW2 might not have had to happen.

I don't think everything is "fake", so much as it is written from the point of view and for the benefit of the ruling classes. I think many people can see there is a problem is our society, but with so much distortion and confusion, it is difficult to bring people together in unified concert unless there is a clear and immediate threat.