COMMENTARY A tangled web
What would you do if I told people that your mother was a lady of the evening? You’d be angry, of course, but the first thing you’d do is deny it. But the damage would be done. Some people, perhaps many people, would wonder how much your mother charges, and what services she offers. That’s EXACTLY what the Republicans do to vilify their opponents.
A lie can do a LOT of harm. That’s what the Republicans have found out. In fact, it’s become their main weapon.
Donald Trump planned to win re-election in 2020 by lying. He began planning it long before the 2020 election. In fact, after the 2016 election, he said this: “I won the popular vote, if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” There wasn’t a shred of proof that any significant fraud had occurred. But millions of ignorant, brainwashed voters believed it.
That lie set the stage for the fraud committed four years later by Trump and his minions, and hopefully it will send most of them to prison.
Republicans lie to trash the reputations of political opponents. “Lyin’ Ted Cruz,” “Crooked Hillary” and the “Biden crime family” are just a few of the many victims of these smear campaigns. Proof is never, ever offered, because there IS no proof. But to the great unwashed, proof isn’t necessary; why would their hero say it if it wasn’t true?
In the run-up to the 2020 election, countless television commercials and campaign ads charged that Democrats planned to send 87,000 armed IRS agents to harass middle-class Americans and mom-and-pop small businesses. The agents (only a few of whom were authorized to carry weapons based on situations that put their lives in danger) were hired to root out tax fraud, which costs the federal government a tenth of what’s owed. That shortfall due to tax cheats is a large part of the reason for the annual deficit. By the way, Republicans voted to kill the bill that funded those new hires.
The lies told by Republicans concerning the nature of proposed laws protecting women’s right to have an abortion prior to the third trimester, which is when more than 98 percent of abortions occur, are largely based on the implication that most abortions happen in the third trimester. They do not. These people think that an ounce of ectoplasm is more important than a scared 14-year-old girl – especially because she, you know, did it. Are they just punishing what they consider to be immorality? Or are they envious of the private lives of attractive young people?
Democrats are Communists, or radical leftists, or socialists, or godless atheists, or pedophiles, or whatever. No they’re not. A few are, but one percent of the human population is too mentally ill to function in society, and at some point in most people’s lives they experience a psychotic episode, and who know what we’re capable of saying at a moment like that. No, most Democrats are just like most Republicans, except that they try to stay informed, so that they can tell when they’re being lied to. Republicans will turn and walk away. They darned sure won’t read to get to the bottom of things.
Trump claimed that his huge tax cut would benefit ordinary Americans. It did – for a few years. Then it reverted. But the tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations didn’t. The resulting shortfall is part of the reason why the national debt continues to rise. It’s not that we spend too much; it’s that taxes – especially taxes for the super-rich are too low. “Taxes will hurt businesses and jobs will be lost.” No and no.
Lies can be entertaining: A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute earlier this year showed about one-fourth of Republicans believe the nutty claims of Qanon, a movement that contends that Satanist pedophiles control the government and the media (https:// www.prri.org/press-release/new-prri-report-reveals-nearly-one-infive-americans-and-one-in-four-republicans-still-believe-in-qanonconspiracy-theories).
The Republican Party lies because their followers have shown absolutely no inclination to prevent themselves from being used. The reason has been labeled “identity protective cognition” by Professor Dan Kahan of Yale Law School. It’s different from just being dumb, although I can’t see in what way it is.
Even when they give plausible reasons for what they do, the Republican Party has ulterior motives that might be beyond the understanding of the faithful. The purpose of filling federal judgeships with Republicans is said to be to obtain more conservative rulings. But it’s a bait-and-switch; of much greater importance is the fact that federal judgeships are lifetime appointments, which is the opposite of democracy. Isolating federal courts from the withering eye of democracy has been one of Trump’s major “accomplishments,” although characterizing a tactic that weakens democracy an accomplishment is a little disappointing. Four-year terms would end this dirty trick.
There are currently nine Republican Congressmen who want to be the next Speaker of the House of Representative. All but two voted not to certify that Joe Biden as the winner; the rest of them lied. Is that the best we can do?
Twelve years ago I wrote a book called HTTPV that described an internet protocol to prevent websites from lying. A good friend of mine with a PH.D. from Harvard read my book and called it “utopian,” which is Harvard-speak for childish and infeasible. The reincarnation of Twitter is shutting down liars as we speak, and I expect that yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater will indeed be banished someday from the Internet.
Lies are the principal weapon of the Republican Party. Help put a stop to it. Call them out. Shine a spotlight on liars on the Internet. You can’t shame the shameless, but it’s fun to try. And if just might come to pass, like the utopian scenario described in my last book.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive.
Les Pinter is a contributing columnist and a Springville resident. His column appears weekly in The Recorder. Pinter’s book, HTTPV: How a Grocery Shopping Website Can Save America is available in both Kindle and hardcopy formats on Amazon.com. Contact him at lespinter@earthlink.net