When is a lie not a lie? Most often, when it is a work of fiction, understood by both creator and consumer to be such. Also, when it is a myth -- that is, a description of the world (or some part of it, or some event in it) which requires faith to equate it with truth, especially after the general advance of knowledge discovers facts contrary to faith.

Consider the classic stories we were so thoroughly raised to call myths that the mention of the word invokes these examples by reflex: tales of the Greek pantheon. It takes a deliberate effort to contemplate a time when those stories were believed to be true, when those gods were believed to exist, and to behave as they did, and to control their divers forces of nature and the fates of men and women. Yet, at some point in the pre-Classical past, such must have been the case.

Pause briefly for the holiday "we" are on the eve of celebrating: Myth, or truth? The answer depends solely on faith.

Now consider the Book of Deuteronomy: questioned for its anachronism (even as early as the Talmud!) and now widely considered by scholars to have been commissioned by King Josiah to provide retroactive justification for his policies, and for the centralization of the priesthood, including divine retribution for transgression. The word of God as transcribed by Moses (as many still believe), or "historical revisionism"?

And: Virgil's Aeneid. I read it (in translation, of course) in my thirties, as a 'returning adult' college student, and found it to be a transparent piece of propaganda, deliberately designed to legitimize the contemporary rulers of Rome by providing antecedents in their deep past under direction of that pack of Greek deities mentioned before. I haven't discovered if anyone among its initial target audience believed it as truth... or even, eight centuries after Homer, if the gods were still believed to be real (interesting fact: the Aeneid predates the Nativity by a mere 30 years, more or less).

Every civilization develops a priestly class. Every priestly class that gains secular power manipulates the faith of the people -- whatever that faith might be -- to maintain power. Often, a separate secular authority subsumes the priesthood: the emperor or pharaoh declares himself a god.

Our civilization was founded in part on the principle that laws which seek to govern the soul shall not become laws which govern the state, and vice versa. Granted, it has taken a long time for mandates grounded in someone's idea of righteous behavior to be repealed from the statute books (running the gamut from so-called "blue" laws to so-called "sodomy" laws), and the process is not yet complete. Every American generation has seen religious resistance to a full secularization of American society. Often, as with the cyclical resurgence of Creationism, mere resistance becomes counter-offense.

For nearly six years, and for two yet to come (though, one hopes, in a diminished capacity), we have been burdened with an administration allied with the latest religious counteroffensive. Some of their number, like the legend of King Canut, have stood on the shore of social change and ordered the tide to halt. Others, especially those at or near the top, have borrowed the ancient priestly techniques of propaganda (recall whence we get the word*) to gain, concentrate and hold power.

As myopic as their historical learning appears to be, one thing they do know: In America, patriotic zeal can rival, if not supercede, religious zeal in its intensity and its importance to the populace. It is subject to the same kind of manipulation, as well: fear, intimidation and hatred, all founded on the claim that only they have The Truth, the One True Way (and in Rove's case, "the math"). Substitute for Righteousness some other intangible -- like Victory -- and you have it. They do not omit anathematizing their opponents, either. The persecution of Galileo was not about preserving the myth of an Earth-centered universe in the face of contrary evidence -- it was about preserving ecclesiastical power through unquestioning faith in Church doctrine. The recent, thinly-disguised persecutorial rhetoric is about preservation of power through unquestioning faith in the Bush Doctrine, even in the face of contrary evidence.

News to anyone? Shouldn't be. What really galls is the number of intelligent Americans who fall for it anyway.

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(* -- be sure to scroll down to "Techniques of propaganda generation" -- it's quite edifying)