Politics & Power Quote by Gary Webb

Webb’s line lands like a streetwise warning, not a civics lecture: the more the state insists something matters, the more it has to lose by telling you the truth. It’s a reversal of the usual patriotic script, where “important stuff” is precisely where government is presumed to rise above spin. Webb drags that assumption into the light and treats it as naive.

The intent is less nihilistic than prosecutorial. Coming from a journalist, “You can’t believe” isn’t a call to apathy; it’s a demand for adversarial verification. The repetition and bluntness do the work of a cross-examination. No qualifiers, no soothing “sometimes.” He’s modeling a posture: trust is not a default setting, it’s something government must earn under scrutiny.

The subtext is about incentives. On mundane questions, the cost of candor is low; on wars, surveillance, covert operations, public health crises, or political scandal, the stakes are reputational and strategic. That’s where message discipline hardens into outright deception, and where “national security” becomes a rhetorical force field that can swallow evidence and accountability. Webb’s “especially” is the tell: he’s pointing to the machinery of secrecy and the PR apparatus that accompanies it.

Context matters because Webb’s career embodied the risks of that suspicion. After reporting on CIA-linked Contra cocaine trafficking, he faced institutional backlash that many read as an object lesson in how power defends itself. The quote functions as both credo and scar tissue: a journalist’s reminder that the biggest stories come prepackaged with the strongest lies.