Our Lying Times

by William Jellick

Commenting that ‘this was the first time that I’ve seen a senator denied an extra minute or two to finish his remarks’ after Al Franken had enforced the senate speaking limit on his buddy Joe Lieberman during a recent health reform debate, John McCain then added ‘ I must say, I don’t know what’s happening to this body but I think it’s wrong’.

McCain, either unable to remember that he himself had actually done the same to a Democratic senator in 2003, or simply calculating that no one would notice his lie, was just doing business as usual and saying whatever it took to gain some advantage (in this case, publicly slamming a Democrat ) – truth, hypocrisy and embarrassment be damned. And compared to some of the whoppers that he’s coughed up, (‘We are all Georgians today’ and ‘I never said I was a maverick’ are two that come to mind), this one was microscopic. So who cares?

The calculation appears to be one that more people choose these days. One thing we can agree with McCain on though is that something is indeed wrong – wrong with the body politic that he’s helped shape. You’d think that so much immediate and pervasive reporting through internet news and YouTube would throttle these guys but instead the lies and exaggerations only seem to be coming at an ever faster rate.

The ‘get-ahead-at-all-costs’ culture has adopted and nearly perfected the ‘lie, mislead, obfuscate – whatever suits you at this moment is ok’ game plan. And unlike earlier times when the framing of the news, i.e. the delivery through trusted sources, was capable of forming the critical and relevant themes of our times, our current world is no longer able to rely upon this major filter to skim the propagandists out. Bogus, slanted and outright dishonest operations enabled by big money and the Internet assume the solemnity and gravitas of these bygone gatekeepers but not their integrity for truth. Our news has been 'Photoshopped' and it's become nearly impossible, unless you make it a full-time job, to know what the real photo looked like.

The modern world of charlatans and poseurs, who traffic not only in outright lies of commission but ‘omission', has a formidable ability to shape and steer not only those among us who are less aware (sometimes referred to as ‘clueless’) but also some who should be beyond their grasp. Reckless and suicidal financial scams go viral within the usually risk-adverse and conservative world of legitimate finance. Groups of ‘outraged citizens’ have their anger harnessed and misdirected against their own best interests by political demagogues - stoking the rising tide of ‘tea baggers’ and ‘patriots’ to scream against health care reform that would most surely help them more than the skillful puppeteers pulling their strings.

Fox News recently seized on the signing of the nuclear reduction pact by president Obama and Russian premier Medvedev to produce one particularly snarky sequence between Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity. This ‘discussion’ has Gingrich blatantly lying about whether Obama has ‘said’ that we will not retaliate with a nuclear response even if we are attacked by biological weapons. And Hannity, in his most Cronkite-esk tone, ‘confirmed’ that Obama did in fact ‘say’ this. Anyone having read this part of the agreement or who had seen the meeting or read the transcripts, which was not particularly long or complex, knew immediately that Gingrich and Hannity were lying. But in the upside-down world of Fox News, fact-checking never happens to stories they want to believe in so this absolutely blatant lie went into the minds of its viewers - adding to their ‘Obama-hatred’ index and giving them yet another ‘reason’ (out of the fire-hose spray Fox puts out daily) to get ‘armed and dangerous’ (Minnesota Republican congresswoman Michelle Bachmann’s words) to stop our socialist/Marxist/Fascist/Nazi-ist/Kenyan-born/Muslim president from thoroughly dismantling our country.

Say anything, do anything, no matter how outrageous, for some fame, money, power or other such self-serving end. Retract it (maybe) or deal with it later – or worse, simply ignore it until it goes away, allowing it to settle into that vast pool of erroneous ‘conventional wisdom’ that informs so many of our beliefs.

The lying grows as the perpetrators of this ruse find their success lures them to ever more outrageous behavior as they continue to push the envelope like some bizarre game of ‘chicken’ that tests the limits of our tolerance. Wall Street, televangelists, politicians (usually of the Republican variety, but occasionally Democrats too), hate-talk radio, Fox News - these groups have taken ‘con artist’, propaganda and ‘free speech’ to a new and dangerous level.

But all public lies aren't equal. Simple lies committed by 'rogue' liars such as Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman, pale to 'systemic' lies organized by well-funded interest groups. These are lies are part of larger strategies to discredit or reverse the truth and live within a program of patient, calculated deception - and whose gestation is often defined not in terms of months or even years, but in decades. Yes, the basic blocks of giant scams not expected to bear fruit for decades to come are being laid today. The Federalist society, an ultra conservative group, was conceived in the 1970's to provide reliably conservative candidates to the Federal judiciary. The selection of many of these candidates, predicated upon Republican administrations, would not take place for years as in the case of Samuel Alito and John Roberts. And what is the big lie behind the Federalist Society? That they are for truth rather than partisan advancement.

Lying seems to have become a valid and uncontested strategy in many areas of public ‘discourse’. David Brock wrote a book (The Republican Noise Machine) on how the Republican Party fabricates then advances lies into ‘fact’ through their media outlets. He’s one to know since he was part of the apparatus (specializing in the ‘Arkansas’ project to discredit Bill and Hillary Clinton) until abandoning it in the 90’s, even though he was well subsidized, as his conscience finally got the better of him. He was so filled with contrition that he started the website 'Media Matters' to act as watchdog for right-wing lies (let me know if anyone can find a similar site whose sole purpose is to point out only left-wing lies.)

Has our modern life with its awesome ability to collect and distribute information, turned us into creatures that even our least-educated ancestors would not recognize? Have we reached our limit to adequately digest what we see, read and hear to have become a generation of naive pawns in sophisticated propaganda ploys? Unlike the American army who laughed at Tokyo Rose, are we collectively taking her modern indigenous ilk seriously when they are cloaked in respected wrappers of ‘news’ or ‘religion’ and delivered not with an Asian accent but with the down-home sensibility of ‘heartland’ America? Are we becoming creatures who cannot tell truth from fiction? Are we now only capable of manufactured and misguided rather than honest outrage? The answers to these questions may not be as disturbing as our indifference to the effects they inflict on us in the first place.

There have always been swindlers and charlatans to bilk the gullible but it seems like rather than being repulsed by these people we are now more likely to be inspired by them. The modern big-lie con-artist no longer belongs just to the 'lumpenproletariat' underclass of swindlers, beggars and prostitutes who live in the shadows of society - they run the meetings of business, speak from the pulpit of religion and walk the halls of government proudly - confident in their righteousness and invincibility.

Not long ago the very core of the definition of 'conservative' meant 'following the rules' - particularly in matters of finance. How was it then that, in the supposedly highly 'conservative' area of banking and finance, a decision was made to stop checking employment on mortgage applicants – a decision that was adopted by a huge segment of the home mortgage industry? Why did the person who made that decision - and you know it really does come down to one person – like ‘person-x’ in a viral epidemic - decide that it was ok? Or did they not even think that far, succumbing to the new conventional wisdom that surely someone in that supposedly vast sea of people with ‘integrity’ would eventually put a stop to it if it got too far out of control?

Yes, forces beyond the local loan originator were dictating some of the new rules that acted like termites gnawing away at our economic foundations. But still, something so pervasive as to have a nickname in the popular lexicon - 'liar-loan' - must have reached someone somewhere where it set off sirens and alarms - someone who had the authority to put on the brakes. But yet, it was only when our entire economic system was on the verge of meltdown did it become important to understand its implications.

The reverend (sic) Pat Robertson, a Yale-educated man, said on his television show that Haiti, after the recent earthquake, is paying the price for ‘making a pact with Satan’ that helped them get out from under French colonial rule. He also said that 9-11 was the result of God’s wrath for all the homosexuality and paganism in the US. In the past a statement like this might have been accepted by those within earshot or a printed pamphlet. His success, if he had any, fell into the 'fooling some of the people some of the time' category but once exposed to the larger pool of people it would surely have been called out and neutralized by the larger 'reality-based' community.

These days nothing stays within the protective boundary of 'local' - everything is (or should be expected to be) put out there on the great information highway – so using yesterdays logic, certain and immediate censure should fall on the perpetrator of such terrible slurs as those uttered by Mr. Robertson. But for some reason we have lost that side of the equation. Now Robertson is not a clergyman in any church and is only a 'reverend' in the sense that Sarah Palin is a 'governor'. But he spews his hate speech while standing on the shoulders of Christianity so surely there could have been a unified response to him from the leaders of the major Christian denominations. But none came.

It seems that the big lie requires a big response to offset it otherwise it dissolves into that vast ocean of 'conventional wisdom' - taking its place alongside other distortions and valid, reasoned positions. But where are the big responses? In today’s world, nothing happens – except for some op-ed pieces. But there is no shortage of manufactured outrage fueled by ‘astroturf-roots’ groups created by demagogues funded by right-wing oligarchs.

Like drops of rain that flow into mighty rivers, every unchecked amoral/immoral decision adds to the numbing of our societal consciences and the dimming of our collective critical faculties. This river has flooded our souls to the point that even brazen, prima facie public lying, usually reserved only for ‘sociopaths’ and bare-knuckled politicians, barely raises an eyebrow today, as if we’ve all succumbed to mass hypnosis or mass fatigue. The advertising professional, who's business it is to shape opinion, knows the game. A discussion with one of its bright stars summed up what he’d seen over the years: ‘it’s not a fair fight anymore – my profession can make ‘up’ look like ‘down’ and ‘black’ look like ‘white’. All we need is enough money and we can move an opinion and therefore improve a company’s sales, or determine the outcome of an election’. He doesn't really understand why but he knows that the formulas and strategies have been vetted and they work.

Bill Jellick is a Robbinsense staff writer