Meetings to be followed by refreshments, English wines served. Sometimes our patriotic pretenders are sincere, though the problem with sincerity is that it is impervious to truth. We are like a nation of method actors, who have convinced ourselves that we are someone else. And if our Great Pretenders are playing on the gullibility of the people they can't think much of them. Which makes them a curious sort of patriot.
Totalitarian regimes go in for absolute lies.
Democracies fool themselves too, though not always consciously, and not all the time. The danger of half-truths is that they seep into our consciousness and rigidify, like water into porous rock. Few people in Soviet Russia thought that they were eating well, but a lot of people in Britain have persuaded themselves that, culturally speaking, they are feasting with the gods. In Britain, all the culturally famished need do is plug into a speech by one of our Great Pretenders in the arts. And this is not just by boosting investment, but also by giving strategic direction and encouraging progress towards clear objectives.