Source: TomDispatch
by Alfred McCoy
“In his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, which is eerily evocative of our current political plight, Gabriel Garcia Marquez described how a Latin American autocrat ‘discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, [and] became convinced … that the only livable life was one of show.’ In amassing unchecked power spiced with unimaginable cruelty, that fictional dictator extinguished any flicker of opposition in his imaginary Caribbean country, reducing its elite to a craven set of courtiers. Even though he butchered opponents, plundered the treasury, raped the young, and reduced his nation to penury, ‘lettered politicians and dauntless adulators … proclaimed him the corrector of earthquakes, eclipses, leap years and other errors of God.'” (10/06/25)