Walter Lippmann — Conclusion: Lippmann Agonistes

1. 1. Lippmann blamed Lyndon Johnson alone for the Vietnam catastrophe, not the two presidents before him.
2. 2. Lippmann argued that Johnson's manipulation of opinion created a 'false consensus' that undermined the fundamental assumption of the American system.
3. 3. Noam Chomsky argued that intellectuals were complicit in the Vietnam War because they shaped the ideology that enabled it.
4. 4. Chomsky rejected the distinction between 'responsible critics' like Lippmann and 'irresponsible' activists, arguing that the crisis demanded smashing the consensus.
5. 5. Lippmann worried that public opinion had played a role in willing the war, noting a growing sense of guilt and shame among Americans.
6. 6. Lippmann argued in 1968 that America faced a crisis of politics itself, suffering from nihilism rather than communism or radicalism.
7. 7. Lippmann backed Richard Nixon for president in 1968, arguing that repression might be unavoidable to maintain law and order.
8. 8. Lippmann supported the publication of the Pentagon Papers as a necessary political reckoning, arguing that the government had over-classified and hidden things.
9. 9. Hannah Arendt argued that the Pentagon Papers exposed elite self-deception and a belief in unlimited possibilities in manipulating people.
10. 10. Chomsky argued that anticommunist ideology controlled by elites was the key factor in mobilizing support for imperial intervention, and he stressed the complicity of mainstream expertise.
11. 11. Lippmann spent his final years in despair, expressing stoicism and resignation when asked about democracy's future.