Dr. Forbush Thinks

Politicians and Pundits always strive to be seen in the best light. Actually, they really want their policy and ideology to be seen in the best light. This often means clouding the truth. When the truth hurts make the audience turn their heads, could be the mantra for any political group.

The Bush administration has continually used distraction and fear to engineer their policy agenda. The truth is now quite obvious that the picture that they had painted for the American people over the last four years is quite different than reality. Painstaking effort has been made to create a basis for every untrue statement made over this period, which finds its roots in the claim of poor intelligence.

The sad truth is that the Bush administration has carefully and continuously created the plausible deniability defense for every action taken over the last four years. It worked for Ronald Reagan in regard to the Iran Contra scandal and there isn’t much doubt that it will legally work here as well. But, all this proves is that a President can do much more than the law actually says as long as he can claim that he didn’t know the truth. This means that the ideal president for a group of marauding radicals  is a president that knows very little of what is actually going on, and he is willing to sign everything suggested to him by the radicals running the show.

How can the people be protected from this type of manipulation?

Some groups think that it is wise to fight fire with fire. They have taken to creating their own version of the truth based on statements made by the opposition. These groups feel that exaggeration and pushing the limits of truth is fair in this world of lies and deception. “If they lie and get away with it, we should lie and get away with it as well,” might be overheard in a private behind the scenes meeting.

This type of action is highly effective on the political level. People have been able to manipulate large segments of the population by doing exactly this. Combating lies of an evil enemy with lies from the friendly side has been done throughout history and it works on the most important segment of the society, the middle of the road voter who doesn’t pay close attention to the details of a political argument.

Can this be good for a true democracy?

When the reward for lying outweighs the penalty for lying we have no choice but to lie. When morals and ethics are not valued by the voting population, then the enemy will win with lies every time. The only solution to fighting the ongoing battle of lies is to make morals and ethics more important in our society. But, when the group that claims to champion these ideas uses lies and deception to win elections the society is doomed.

OK, my last paragraph lacked specific detail.

What I am saying, is that the Republicans have claimed to be on the side of God. They claim that they are for moral values. However, in the last election they used lies to tear down John Kerry’s heroic reality. John Kerry was a true hero that fought in a war that he believed in at the time. He was awarded medals for his valor in that war. He became disillusioned with the war and when he returned he used his patriotic beliefs to try and stop the war to protect his fellow Americans from their run away government. But with a firestorm of lies the Republicans tore apart everyone of these truths. Now, if the Republicans that claim that they are for truth and goodness because they have God on their side can not control the liars and allow the people to vote on truth, then the country is doomed to mudslinging and lies for eternity. If the Party of the Christian Right condones lying, because winning is more important that truth, then there is no hope for a truly Democratic America. This is because the guy in the middle who doesn’t follow politics closely is the guy that is influenced by these lies and he is the guy who decides the elections.

I am writing this, because I have begun to see ads from the left that are clearly pushing the limits of truth to the same disgusting point that the Republicans have been pushing it for the last ten years. This activity does not make things clear. This activity only makes thinks more murky and I believe it is actually playing into the hands of the established liars. The guys in the middle will only pay less attention to politics, because the largest reason that they give for not following politics is that both sides lie, so who can tell who we should believe.