POLITICIAN’S LIES ARE THE BANE OF ANY DEMOCRACY

….The liar, Mr. Tell-It-Like-It-Is himself, Chris Christie

 

Is Donald Trump the “Joe McCarthy” of the 21^st Century?

 

While watching Morning Joe on the day after the Iowa Caucus, co-host Mika Brzezinski reminded Joe Scarborough of something that Joe had told her some time ago.  She said that he had said, when it comes to what politicians say, no matter if it’s true, “If they say it often enough, it becomes true!”

 

As I have been saying since I started this column as an editor for the American Chronicle on-line news, it is our job to fact-check what the politicians tell us and to do what we can to get the real information to the readers.

 

As one national opinion writer Richard Cohen wrote right after the Iowa Caucus, “I have just reviewed the herculean efforts of The Washington Post’s Fact Checker writers, following the GOP debates. Hands down, Donald Trump is the biggest liar of them all.”

 

As examples of what Mr. Cohen is saying, here is a very small slice of Trump falsehoods to which Mr, Cohen refers:

 

·       Trump said that “…25 different news stories” proved he was always against the war in Iraq.  What stories?  None can be found.

·       Trump said he hadn’t sought to open a casino in Florida  (He tried more than once.)

·       Trump said “…almost every other country does not grant birthright citizenship” (about 30 countries do),

·       Trump denied “…calling Marco Rubio ‘Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator’  ”  It’s on video tape.

·       Trump denied concocting a tale that the Saudi family and “girlfriends” of the 9/11 hijackers flew home afterwards to Saudi Arabia where…they wanted to watch their boyfriends on television.” This is also on tape.

·       Trump stated in a campaign speech “…thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the collapse of the twin towers” ( None of that happened and neither has Trump made a correction.)

 

But of course, Donald Trump isn’t alone in this effort of falsehoods.

 

Probably the latest and worst political lie was when the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, Carly Fiorina told the story during one of the GOP debates about the video she had seen of a “fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, about to be carved up by Planned Parenthood for sale of its body parts.”  When confronted by the fact that no such tape exists, she still insisted she had seen it. This wannabee politician has shown before that she does not have the ability to tell the truth.

 

Other politician’s “lies” that Mr. Cohen has made available to us via the Post fact checkers include:

 

“Chris Christie also ranks high. Mr. Tell-It-Like-It-Is insisted on saying that he was ‘appointed’ US attorney for New Jersey on Sept. 10, 2001, a momentous one day before the terrorist attacks.” Truthfully, he was nominated on Pearl Harbor Day. Dec. 7^th, 2001.  When the fact-checkers have pointed this out, Christie just repeats the lie.

 

The American political process has always had its excess of liars.  Even going back to the founding of this country and the story about George Washington and the cherry tree. When asked by his father if he had cut down the tree, the young Washington confessed. “I cannot tell a lie,” he said. “I cut down the tree.”  The Rev. Mason Locke Weems (1759-1825) was the source of the story, but Alas, the story itself is untrue.

 

With the new technology of having the internet, this has allowed the proliferation of millions of untruths.  But it has also spawned the advent of the political Fact Checkers which were not available back when long-time political liars were wreaking havoc.   That was such as back in the 1950’s when Senator Joseph McCarthy had caused so many innocent people to lose their jobs and their careers due to his lies and false accusations of their being communists.  McCarthy made many false accusations and he concocted figures purporting that there were communists inside the US State Department.  The newspapers printed nearly every word of what he said. The press felt its hands were tied because they had to publish what an important senator had said.  The papers didn’t have fact checkers and they could not label a lie as a lie. Back then, that was the determination for the reader to make.

 

Actually today, that is still the case, but individuals now have Google and Fact Checking operations such as PolitiFACT, The Fact Checker and Snopes where Urban Legends and out-right lies can be debunked.

 

The problem today with someone like a Donald Trump is that he just continues to lie and never admits a lie or mistake, even when confronted.  But being a major celebrity, for some cable news channels, he is also a profit center where they cover him live, to the point of exhaustion. The current proliferation of fact-checkers has not made any difference in Trump’s position as he never concedes a lie or a mistake

 

The problem is not that we aren’t aware that politicians lie.  The problem is the level of the lie and the frequency of the lies.  If people don’t take the time to check out what the politicians say, then the politicians will continue to make chumps out of the people, not the media.

 

America is a small “d”, democratic nation and we need honesty to be the virtue we need to make good political decisions.  The vice of lying will keep us from deciding on the right politician or the appropriate positions to support.  The lies of the Trump’s, Christie’s, Cruz’, Rubio’s, Fiorino’s, Bush’s or any politician are not what the nation needs for making the right political decisions.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016