In this advertisement, Ronald Reagan pushes the deadliest drug known to humankind.
***
If "facts are stupid things," they can be dismissed, a practice much to Ronnie's liking.
If "facts are stubborn things" however, they cannot be dismissed.
Adams' observation is so well known that Reagan misrepresentation was either deliberately deluded or deliberately deluding. (Like his claim that he was present at the liberation of European concentration camps, when, in fact, he spent the entire war in Los Angeles. http://www.salon.com/2010/05/20/bushreagan/)
Whether deluded or deluding, Reagan's mangled epistemology typifies his zeal to supplant truth with platitude.
Often when Reagan was wrong, he was completely wrong.
Diametrically wrong.
Perversely wrong.
Prince of Darkness wrong.
Of course, we all have our personal favorites but by my lights Reagan's most dazzling dismissal of truth was his assertion that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles." http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Trees_cause_pollution
One wonders what travesties St. Ronald devising when death intervened.
Dry water?
Square circles?
A rich compendium of Ronnie's brain farts is accessible at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6106690
***
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Thomas Merton
***
"For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong."
H.L. Mencken