Analysis, Commentary, Opinion
06.01.2019
Truth
All
politicians lie. Even my favorite ones.
They
lie about their intentions, they lie about their motivations, they skew the
data to support their position, the promise what they know they cannot deliver.
Such
is the nature of politics.
We
lie to ourselves when we give credence to them, when we take the hand that we
are offered as they lead us down the primrose bath. We slip on the shaded
lenses, focus on the technicolor dream, narrow our criticism while they slip on
the blinders. We are willing accomplices in all this.
Have
we entered a new era? It seems that we have.
Truth
itself is under attack, our ability to understand it to predicate policy on it,
to cleave to its norms, those things too have seemingly been swept away.
We
used to be able to acknowledge and appreciate a difference between the elected
(political) leadership in government, and those career bureaucrats who keep the
institutions running, year after year, through all of the ups-and-downs in the
political fortunes of either party.
The
safeguards that protected those structures have been undone.
We
are in a dangerous place.
I
listened to Mitch McConnell coyly suggest that if a vacancy in the Supreme
Court were to appear in the presidential election year he would seek to fill
the seat, he laughed as he said it, remembering how he refused to have hearings
on President Obama’s last nominee on the grounds that it was a presidential
election year, and the voters should decide.
He
was lying about his motives then, he gave a deceptive rationale. He overturned
constitutional norms to have his way, and now he would gleefully go back on
himself.
President
Trump nominated men to the highest court who told bald faced lies to the Senate
in their confirmation hearings, perjuring themselves before the bar of justice,
so that they could ascend to the highest place.
They
had no regard for the truth.
The
truth is under constant assault.
All
politicians lie, but none have ever lied as much as Donald Trump, or dragged so
many with them into the morass of lies as he has, just because they fear for
their political life, or things they might enrich themselves from the little
crumbs that he might drop from the table.
How
did we get to this place where a bankrupt TV star, the World’s biggest loser,
one Donald J. Trump, conspired with our adversaries, the Russians to get
himself elected President of the United States, and nearly half the country
does not care.
He
get up on TV and lies to the American people everyday, and they do not protest.
They
repeat his lies when he says that Mexico will pay for his wall, that China is
paying for his tariffs, that he cut taxes for the average people,
They
accept his love affair with the leader of North Korea, and the unreciprocated
bro-mance he has going with Vladimir Putin.
What
has happened here?
Where
are the patriots among the republican electorate?
Why
don’t they abandon him?
The
republican party is anathema to America. They do not want a constitutional
government, they are not worthy of the name republican. They do not want to
live in a representative democracy, they are afraid of the people and an
informed electorate.
They
lie, cheat, and steal, because they hate America.
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