(奇怪的是,唯一的人可能是完全操纵的理想受害者是美国的总统,因为他的工作的浩瀚,他必须围绕在他的顾问......谁“通过过滤信息行使他们的权力主要是到达总统和解释了外界对于他的。”总统,一个是振振有辞,据称是最强大的国家最有权势的人,是唯一的人在这个国家,它的选择范围可以是预定的。这一点,当然,可能发生只有在行政部门已经削减自行关闭,从国会的立法权接触;它是我们的政府体系的必然结果,当被剥夺了参议院,或者是不愿意运动,它的权力participate and advise in the conduct of foreign affairs. One of the Senate’s functions, as we now know, is to shield the decision-making process against the transient moods and trends of society at large — in this case, the antics of our consumer society and the public-relations managers who cater to it.)
阿伦特谈到了谎言的作用,无论是故意的还是顺从的,在我们称之为历史的工艺中:
不同于自然科学家,谁的事项涉及的是,不论其来源,是不是人为的或人为的制定,并因此可以观察,了解,最后竟然只有通过最细致的忠诚事实,鉴于现实改变,the historian, as well as the politician, deals with human affairs that owe their existence to man’s capacity for action, and that means to man’s relative freedom from things as they are. Men who act, to the extent that they feel themselves to be the masters of their own futures, will forever be tempted to make themselves masters of the past, too. Insofar as they have the appetite for action and are also in love with theories, they will hardly have the natural scientist’s patience to wait until theories and hypothetical explanations are verified or denied by facts. Instead, they will be tempted to fit their reality — which, after all, was man-made to begin with and thus could have been otherwise — into their theory, thereby mentally getting rid of its disconcerting contingency.
但更令人担忧的是,Arendt警告更令人担忧的是,这一现实的平坦呈现出政府本身的判断 - 无论如何都比在覆盖文件中,这使得只有少数人的权力和矛盾的人,not available to the representatives who most need that information in order to make decisions in the interest of the public who elected them.Arendt写道:
Not only are the people and their elected representatives denied access to what they must know to form an opinion and make decisions, but also the actors themselves, who receive top clearance to learn all the relevant facts, remain blissfully unaware of them.这是不是因为一些看不见的手故意引领他们误入歧途,而是因为他们在情况下工作,并且习惯的习惯,这允许他们既不时间也没有倾向于狩猎文件中的山脉中的相关事实,其中99½%不应被分类,大多数是无关的所有实际目的。