(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Do We Take Lying Lying Down? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-12-06  

Call it the party of coup-by-canard. In its bright red driver’s seat, before The Donald came The Decider. Though not so prolific as Big Blonder, Dubya was no slouch. As activist/author Charles Lewis tells anyone who’ll listen or read, 43 and his top aides told a whopp[er]ing 935 Lies to mislead us into a cataclysmic, self-defeating mess in Mesopotamia.

And, in effect, to pave the way for Trump. Better late than never, let’s connect some dots and resolve the outcomes (in context). The late psychiatrist/religious writer/Army Lt. Col. M. Scott Peck holds ceaseless deceit to be a hallmark of unbridled evil. To resolve we want no such stuff anywhere near our halls of power should be a lead-pipe no-brainer.

But such resolve takes guts. To count is not to counter. While numbering Trump’s “falsehoods,” the Washington Post effectively turned his seas of deceit into stats. And hence (absent widespread notice of the storms they’ve presaged) into something like business-as-usual. (Numbers may not lie, but neither do they speak to the heart of the matter, or of the voters.)

“Informed electorate,” RIP. While truth swoons, falsehood soars. According to a University of Massachusetts Amherst study (noted in “Memory-Holing a Coup,” a chapter in podcaster/author Sarah Kendzior’s expose They Knew), as of 12/28/21, fewer than 6 in 10 Americans grasped the fact that President Biden had defeated the Prevaricator-in-Chief; that must mean 40%+ gave no small credence to the most familiar of Trump’s Big Lies.

Talk about choosing foxes over fowl. Even while the J6 committee probed (“to the bottom,” it said, of the GOP’s attempted coup), voters leaned toward handing control of the House to the party of (quoting Trump) “get[ting] rid of the ballots.” (Go figure.)

Re such peril, one would have hoped to hear Dems bray early and often- while holding newsies to account for effectively striving to foment a “red wave” that could only have been seditious.

Disclosure: for the most part, I’ve heard crickets. (Sad.)

Not so long ago, Bush’s crusaders (now Trump’s cult) stopped calling themselves “the party of Lincoln” (aka “Honest Abe”). Since then, George’s Own Party has gone pretty much all lies, all the time. So now an 80-ton Godzilla in the Rotunda looms: if we fail to thwart the far right’s normalization of its DC search-and-destroy mission as “legitimate political discourse” (its biggest lie of all), it may never stop seeking the prize it so narrowly missed. (Namely, vote-shredding, Big Brotherly autocracy.)

Let it be stressed. Russia’s reportedly ailing strongman has gone full-on genocidal. Two years (or so) before seriously seeking the White House, Trump (in a letter) pined to become Vladimir Putin’s “best friend.” In like vein, the CPAC cultists who (weeks after 1/6/21) raised a gilded idol of The Donald have feted, visited, and paid homage to Hungary’s power-crazed, profoundly un-American Viktor Orban, aka Putin Lite.

Such role models. (Call Trump, Orban, and Putin an actual axis of evil- while recalling and cursing Bush’s self-serving abuse of the term.)

We have but two major parties. We should never have let one of them sink so low with such near-impunity. The Donald take the hindmost, the least we can do is (quoting nutritionist Sheryl Moller) “Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth.” Early and often and loud. For a change.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/6/2140320/-Do-We-Take-Lying-Lying-Down

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/