Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state . - Noam Chomsky, American linguist.

Blessed are the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9)

Propaganda at the highest level requires countless repetition of half-truths and deceits. The mind en masse need to be numbed using strategies like Pavlov's classical conditioning or Malaysia's Biro Tatanegara's pogrom of mind bending, so that the target audience can continue to salivate for more twisted information to be mutated into 'globalising truth' that will universalise.

The pope and the president of the United States were performing the act of making the global masses salivate. This is done perhaps not only to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attack on The Word Trade Center, and to remind the world that the 21st century will not only be a "Wolfowitz-ing" century for America but also a renewal of the "crusading past" trajectoried into newer forms of symbolism.

Politics need symbolisms of half-truths and deceits, just like revolutions need their madmen and martyrs, and nations need myths and selective history.