“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”
Adolf Hitler
Well, frumps, I always appreciate it when I come across a writer or a notion that can make me laugh, for a minute, about otherwise serious business. Today, David Sirota at Huffington Post provided some comic relief with his article “How the Media and the GOP Turn Lies Into Zombie Lies: A Health Care Case Study.” A “zombie lie,” for the uninitiated or humorless, is a lie with legs, a lie that won’t die no matter how hard you whack it with the “truth stick.”
Recent examples are: the Birther Zombie, the Death Panel Zombie, a small family of ACORN Zombies, the Obama is a Socialist Zombie, the Obama Stole the Election Zombie and, as David Sirota points out, we now have the Health Care Reform Costs a Bazillion Dollars and Will Make the Deficit Balloon Out of Control Zombie. That’s a lot of Zombies already in our midst; just think what it will be like if the current Zombie production keeps pace or, worse yet, goes up.
All of these things start out as lies, and not especially clever lies at that. In fact, some of them are so lame and so transparent that it’s hardly worth dignifying them by taking the time to refute them. But that’s where we make our big mistake because it is through repetition and a lack of loud, equally repetitive opposition that garden variety lies become Zombies. Once a lie becomes a Zombie, you can smother it in facts, debate until you’re blue in the face, demand proof or hold it up to public ridicule – to absolutely no avail.
Unfortunately, conditions are pretty conducive to a Zombie population explosion. Little Zombie spores are tweeted, texted, emailed, leaked, forwarded and amped-up daily and the Internets are the perfect incubator for them to live long and prosper. Meanwhile, the mainstream media that we used to rely on to keep us at least a little honest are experiencing identity crises while fighting for their own survival.
Back In the Olden Days . . .
I think that the media used to naturally self-police, to an extent, as a result of intra-mural competition. The traditional Media pantheon, made up of the likes of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow built their reputations on telling the Truth – at least as much of it as they were in a position to observe. That is not to say that those newsmen of old didn’t “spin” the news; but there’s a big difference between nuance and outright deception.
Broadcast newsmen in the early days of television were too visible and too easy a target to lie. Their communication model was one-to-many as opposed to today’s model which is many-to-many and therefore it’s harder to hold anyone accountable for the reliability of information.
So that explains how lies can proliferate more easily in the 21st century news media but it doesn’t explain how those lies are born. If you come here often you know that I have a left-of-center tendency but, even in my most non-partisan mood, I sincerely believe that the right wing generates more lies that grow up to be Zombies than the left (if you have some good recent Democrat Zombies post them in comments to keep things fair – barring of course, the “I did not have sex with that woman” lie that never made it to Zombie-hood).
A Brief, Homespun Psychology of Lying
The Republican propensity for lying doesn’t appear to be a factor of whether the GOP is in power or not because one of the greatest Zombie lies of all time was George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s weapons of mass destruction whopper and its Zombie partner that linked Saddam Hussein directly to the 9/11 attack so that we could get on with bombing Iraq. There are people in this country (actually, right down the street from me) who would bet the ranch that Saddam Hussein gave the order to attack the twin towers.
Rather, I believe, lying is all wrapped up in the GOP’s self-image and ideology. Republicans seem to feel that lying is justified to burnish the image and to advance the ideology. Lying is necessary to advance the ideology because it is not a very palatable ideology. Republican ideology is dogmatic, rigid, and dog-eat-dog. A throwback to our Puritan background . . . Don’t believe me? Go read the most recent Republican Party Platform.
Have you ever had an acquaintance who is a World Class, habitual, pathological liar? They’re not too hard to spot: they’re usually somewhat arrogant and because they believe that they are smarter than the rest of us they are often sloppy about being found out in a lie. The habitual liar contradicts him/herself with abandon, has no sense of the potential harm in lying and usually makes for a pretty pathetic impression, in the end.
I worked with someone like that for years so I had plenty of time to puzzle over what makes a person become a habitual liar. I came to several conclusions of my own: 1) liars believe that there is a valuable kernel of truth in what they say that makes the lie “alright;” 2) related to the first point, some liars seem to believe that lying is justified in order to make others do something for “the greater good;” 3) some liars use lying to distance themselves from truths that threaten or make them uncomfortable and 4) sometimes a liar’s lies represent wishes for something that the liar expects is, in truth, unattainable.
I’m sure some brainiac psychologists have written tomes on this subject that might alter my perspective on liars, but for now, I have to rely on my own assessment. And of course the conventional wisdom that assumes that those who lie about themselves have a poor self-image. Poor self-image, in turn, can be more or less justified in some cases.
I Lie, Therefore I Am
So, in dusting off all of those ruminations, I find that they still make pretty good sense today when applied to the current political scene.
Despite all of the trials, tribulations, misadventures and social and economic disintegration that we’ve endured over the eight long years of the Bush administration, Republicans still have the unmitigated gall to describe themselves in the following ways and to blindly attack any other agenda:
The GOP is the Party of Fiscal Conservativism
No matter what myth you’ve been told about the brilliance of Reagonomics and trickle down and supply side theory the cold, hard facts are that the GOP has exploded deficits over the last thirty years while the one “tax-and-spend liberal” in office during that period left behind a massive budget surplus that a Republican quickly turned into a massive deficit. Those are facts.
American taxpayers are now stuck with the spiraling tab for Bush’s foreign adventures completely outfitted by corrupt war profiteers and mercenary armies who have turned Perma-War into an indispensible American industry. And as far as the gospel of “free markets” go, we learned how “free” they really are the hard way. Let’s really free those markets and see how long those American corporations last without their guardian angels in the GOP.
Republicans are Strong on National Security
The Bush/Cheney mantra of national security is a sick joke. The Iraq War created far more terrorists in places where there were none before, than have been eliminated in Afghanistan. In Our military is exhausted and demoralized and committing suicide, God help us if we need them for a real threat. Talking tough and playing Soldier of Fortune doesn’t make us safe, it makes us a target.
Republicans Care For Individual Rights
This from the party that made rendition, black sites, water-boarding, enhanced interrogation and Abu Ghraib household words. Oh – and let’s not forget the Patriot Act and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It’s a laugh.
Republicans Represent Family Values
I’m sorry, but I can’t even bring myself to comment on this colossal piece of hypocrisy. The numerous GOP scandals of the past two years speak for themselves . . .
Republicans Just Want a Level Playing Field For Everyone
That’s right, a level-playing field and several sets of rules – one for the politicians, the wealthy and the powerful and another set for the voters, the working classes and minorities who foot the bill. Rules were made to keep the little people in line and to be broken for the movers and shakers.
Home Remedies are The Best
We are being barraged with lies about every political event, position and personage. We talk often of being awash in hate-mongering and fear-mongering which depend on lies for their effectiveness. The difference, today, though is that the media stitch it all together – facts, lies, opinion and hyperbole – into a fabric that is neither true nor false nor in any way reliable.
Because of that, all of us who care what the truth is must take more responsibility to seek it out and to confirm it when we think we’ve found it. Appearances to the contrary, fact-checking is still possible, as a matter of fact the Internet makes it considerably easier than it used to be. One simply has to train a little in recognizing reliable and unreliable sources. A simple rule of thumb is that if you read a news item that strikes a sour note, trust your gut and check it against other reports from different sources.
And one last thing . . . anytime you hear a politician or a journalist lie or repeat a lie, stand up, square your shoulders and yell “YOU LIE.”
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