Throughout history, the use of lies in politics is old stuff. From Machiavelli to Rove, the tactic has had legions of practitioners across national borders and partisan politics. The strategy’s key components are these: Regardless of the issue, if you repeat a lie often enough, it eventually morphs into acceptability and the bigger the whopper the better. If a lie is large enough, it may actually contain an iota of truth which may provide a cloak of credence to the absurdities contained in the body of the lie package. The final ingredient is a nice sprinkling of fear to finish the dish. Fear always works. It is the catalyst that provides the energy needed to spread the lie and to make it stick. Fear also expands the range of acceptability for the lie. As fear increases, the content of the lie becomes viral. In America’s current political climate, the use of the big lie has risen to the level of an art form.
Here is a sampling from our times. It doesn’t matter where the whopper came from. Lies are lies and they diminish the source whatever that may be. Intentional use of lies also diminishes all of us, particularly those of us who leverage a known lie to further a partisan or personal agenda.
“The President is not an American citizen”. This is a great lie and one of my favorrites because there is no thinking involved – none of that thorny policy analysis stuff to confuse anyone. It is still easy to believe even in the face of documentary evidence to the contrary which you can toss aside as forgeries.
Remember this one? “The President’s Health care reform plan creates death squads who will kill off old people”. This whopper has an extra side order of fear to offset its absurdity.
“The President is a Nazi”. This beauty is competing with its sibling, “The President is a Communist”. The pair provides the recipient with the maximum range of ideological choices since the two lies are at opposite edges of the political spectrum. They also lend themselves to a wide spectrum of terrific inflammatory placard ideas.
“The President is a racist”. I love this one. It just rolls off the tongue and defies any explanation so you don’t have to defend it.
“The Government is taking away our freedom”. This whopper is hard to deal with so maybe it is a good idea to start by imagining your world with no government and take it from there. If you need help, revisit the Declaration of Independence to discover why ours was founded. The first paragraph should do the trick. But here’s the real bottom line: The size of government is directly related to the voluntary behavior of its citizens. So if you want smaller government, all you need to do is to behave in a more socially responsible and civil manner. And if you think that the leaders and board rooms of corporate America are to be trusted to act in your interests in the absence of government regulations, you haven’t read a newspaper in the last 5 years.
It is interesting that the people who are most against gay marriage are the loudest anti-government advocates. As they rail against the government’s alleged incursion on their freedoms they have no problem denying freedom to any subgroup they choose. “I can marry any person of my choosing but you can’t.” That’s an odd cry from a champion of freedom.
“(Insert the name of any country) has weapons of mass destruction”. This one (taken directly form Machiavelli’s playbook, The Prince) seems to work as a justification for a panoply of new policies. It takes the fear condiment to the highest level. The nicest part of the lie is that the perpetrator can gin up the evidence allegedly protected by a “top secret” cover sheet thus making it very hard to refute with truth which places it a cut above the “death squad” whopper. Machiavelli nailed this one!
“News, Fair and Balanced.” This is a fabulous whopper. The problem is that people who buy this stuff either can’t tell what is true or they have an agenda that is validated by the twisted commentary on the TV screen. Anyone who feels compelled to tell you that he is “fair and balanced” probably isn’t. Similarly, people who trumpet their patriotism or who parade about with American symbols attached to their bodies or lapels get my attention not always in the way they intended. Many if not most of them have the patriotism of a turnip. It ain’t the wrapping that matters; it’s what’s inside the package that counts!
There are whole subsets of whoppers involving religion and democracy but I will leave that research to you. It is sufficient to mention that our founding fathers agreed for many good reasons that our nation and its government should be a secular one that protects the right of all people to freedom of conscience and their right to worship a god of their choosing or not to worship any god at all.
The use of whoppers will always be a part of our free democracy. But it becomes more dangerous as the level of civic education continues to diminish. The less educated one is, the greater the probability that a patently false slogan will become non-negotiable dogma and that substantive, respectful debate among free people will fade from our social landscape. In a democracy truth usually wins out in the end. If it doesn’t then the first casualty is likely to be democracy itself. And that’s no lie!
Tags: Carl Rove, Fox News, Lies and Politics, Machiavelli, Religion and Politics, Same-sex Marriage
Dr. Paul Wrubel
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