Bingo

I mean, what do you do when a democratic majority listens to the truth, hears and understands it, but nevertheless chooses -- out of habit, fear or just plain xenophobic nationalism -- to ignore, or even applaud, the war crimes of its duly elected leaders?

For a long time I (apparently rather foolishly) believed that if people were presented with the truth then they (or at least, some majority of them) would make rational decisions based on those facts. Perhaps not decisions with which I personally agreed, but at least decisions that I could understand. After being proven wrong more times than I can count, I just don't know how to wrap my brain around this paradigm.

The Whiskey Bar nails it too:

What the health of the Republic requires, in other words, may not be a new crop of leakers and whistleblowers, or a fresh young generation of Woodwards and Bernsteins -- or even a more independent, aggressive media. What it may need is a new population (or half of a population, anyway), one that hasn't been stupified or brainwashed into blind submission, that won't look upon sadistic corruption and call it patriotism, and that will refuse to trade the Bill of Rights for a plastic Jesus and a wholly false sense of security.

That's a much taller order than asking the Gods to send us another Deep Throat -- or even a Luke Skywalker. It's also not an easy thing for liberals, with their old-fashioned faith in democracy, to face: That the Evil Emperor might have a majority (a narrow one, but still a majority) on his side. But a truth isn't any less true for being politically unpalatable.