Feb 8, 2018 2 min read

When reading or listening to the news and commentaries of the day, I often become confused, sometimes agitated and often dismayed.

I recently discovered the following quotes from political theorist Hannah Arendt, and her words have encouraged me to sift through the noise. Arendt wrote these words in 1951 when I was a child, but decades later they now take on more importance for me as an adult:

“The essential conviction by all ranks,” in a totalitarian movement “from fellow-travelers to leaders is that politics is a game of cheating.” Continuing, Arendt writes, “In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

When I read these words from Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” for the first time, I was alarmed. After re-reading them, I gained a better understanding of my fellow travelers, but not acceptance of lies, opinions, feelings as truths, the unacceptable as acceptable and the abnormal as normal. It is with respect and reverence that I say, “God bless America and all who live here.”

Sandy Petrosky

Washington