Liars

Well. Well. Well. What have we here? More lies to cover the old lies which were originally told to cover the first set of lies which were intended to deflect attention from the original lies that were offered to justify perhaps the most blatant misuse of power ever in our 230 year run as an independent nation. The lying is so profuse at this point that trying to unravel the tangled web of institutional deceit is almost futile. I suspect the liars themselves are aware of this fact; that confusion among the prosecutors, investigators, and the electorate offers them the needed time to formulate newer and bolder falsehoods, thus raising the junk-heap of self-serving nonsense to ever newer heights.

Will it ever end?

Most of us learned as children that lies are easily exposed. Remember trying to hide that piece of candy? Having your parent ask you to stick out your newly painted tongue, thus revealing your subterfuge? Remember having your exquisite logical explanations destroyed by parents or teachers employing a modicum of common sense and the old “I tried that, too, back in my time” , or the “If I had a nickel for every time that trick was tried on me I’d be rich” response? We learned that telling the truth, painful as that may be, always turns out to be less work than we tried to avoid by telling the lie in first place.

An ex-girl friend of mine put this wisdom well. “As long as I don’t lie, I don’t have to burn up brain cells trying to remember things.” How right she is. Keeping the lies straight is not easy work, especially when that lie turns into a conspiracy which, for those who don’t yet know, is a fancy word for a lie that is shared between two or more persons. The purpose of that lie is irrelevant.

The Bush Administration is the embodiment of blatant falsehood and hypocrisy. They claim to represent the military, but almost all of them avoided military service, and few have children serving in our active military. They claimed to be great business minds yet, before their sojourn in government and the access it afforded; their business dealings were somewhat less than impressive. They claim to represent the ‘culture of life’ and compassion, but at every turn they advocate war. They pat each other on the back for a ‘job well done’ while the rest of the nation wonders what ‘job’ they’re talking about. They pay the media moguls big bucks to spout their fascist propaganda while accusing that same media of being biased against them. And the list goes on and on.

The Republicans insist that evil has a face, and in spite of their indignant finger-pointing in every direction toward alleged terrorists, liberals, the media, pro-choicers, intellectuals, and those few nay-sayers among their own ranks, they have no further to search for this ‘evil’ other than their own vanity mirrors. Their 1984-Orwellian double-speak is not winning the hearts or minds of anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together. The best they can do is buy allies with whatever tax dollars might be left over from their imperialist follies.

Jonathon Alterman quoted Arthur Miller when saying “Never underestimate the power of audacity.” No one imagined that our ‘elected’ leaders would be so boldfaced as to start out telling colossal fibs. We let these first few slide because we couldn’t, like the experienced parent or teacher, ever imagine anyone trying to pass such nonsense off as reality.

This administration hasn’t learned the life-lessons ingrained in most humans by age five or six, which leaves one to wonder what sort of nasty children these scoundrels were.

“I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” (Adlai E. Stevenson Jr., 1900 - 1965, Speech during 1952 Presidential Campaign)