Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

As 21st century America lumbered into existence, it was caught almost immediately in the vice of the 9/11/01 attack on the Twin Towers/Pentagon, the beginning of a false-premised wars in Iraq (the “oh, there really weren’t any WMDs”) and Afghanistan and the beginning of unstoppable “once in a hundred/thousand years” roiling litany of mega climate-change disasters – the 2005 Hurricane Katrina effect – that intensified, soon adding flooding, coastal erosion/surges, killer heat/drought and wildfires to the mix.

But as these internal and external life-changing events were absorbed within the American consciousness, there was another casualty: truth. It started out relatively slowly – the WMD thang – but soon rent the nation apart, polarization on steroids. Denial, blame, projection and “alternative facts” driving inane conspiracy theories became the primal forces behind the great MAGA movement. As Donald Trump began his presidential campaign in 2015, he expanded into the voiceless base of what became the MAGA base. Simple explanations, simple solutions laced with powerful repetition and the great never apologize Trump double down. Lies.

As I watched the October 1st VP debate, I witnessed a very articulate, polished MAGA candidate – well-schooled in Silicon Valley investor pitches – run roughshod over a folksy, sincere Mid-Western opponent, clearly uncomfortable in his debate role. JD Vance – perhaps the real “up from poverty with his Appalachian Mamaw” roots as the only real “DEI candidate” in this race – was smooth, even folksier than Tim Walz for much of the presentation. If you were to evaluate the debate on style, Vance was the winner. Undocumented aliens are buying all those houses? Taking our best jobs? Huh? Not challenged by Walz. But if truth were determinative, Walz ran away with it. For too many Americans, style trumped truth. Truth had very little to do with it.

Under the heel of the ethically impaired, Trump-reconfigured Supreme Court, that highest judicial body veered into space where they did not belong. Insisting that constitutional interpretation required a judicial inquiry into the relevant cultural history at the time such provisions were enacted (“originalism”), the court was able to twist the 2nd Amendment into treating semiautomatic assault weapons and large-magazine firearms as if the prevailing ethos of 1789’s flintlocks and musket were the only modern metric. Enjoying the ability to reverse the hard-fought civil rights, expertise-driven Congressional created medical, environmental, financial and health & safety driven administrative agencies, they had no issue in reversing the anti-“coat-hanger abortion” Roe v Wade precedent… as if none of these ever existed.

Donald Trump’s billionaire anti-tax, anti-regulation cronies took advantage of Clinton-era changes in media ownership rules and rolled up rightwing radio and television assets to ply their reactionary message. Quite willing to trade white Christian nationalist social and cultural priorities to get that deregulation and tax cuts, these mega-rich easily transitioned into a masterful Trump’s segway into the relevant social media, as that medium evolved. The VP debate, where Vance secured an advance rule-change that there would be no “fact-checking,” was the most articulate expression of this rising political vector.

As Jamelle Bouie, New York Times columnist evaluated the October 1st Walz/Vance contest on October 2nd: It’s a pretty straightforward verdict: Vance won this debate. “It’s not hard to see why. He has spent most of his adult life selling himself to the wealthy, the powerful and the influential. He is as smooth and practiced as they come. He has no regard for the truth. He lies as easily as he breathes. We saw this throughout the debate. He told Americans that there are 20 million to 25 million ‘illegal aliens’ — a lie. He told Americans that Mexico is responsible for the nation’s illegal gun problem — a lie. He told Americans that Trump actually tried to save the Affordable Care Act — a lie. If Vance had to sell the benefits of asbestos to win office, he would do it well and do it with a smile.”

He also imbued the office of Vice President with powers that have never been accorded to any American second-in-command: He effectively anointed Harris as the sole executive power that promulgated and controlled the entirety of the policies and decisions under President Joe Biden. Huh? If anything, Trump may have witnessed an upsetting reality: Vance was an infinitely more convincing liar than Trump had ever been, either in presenting absurd fabrications with a look of deep sincerity, avoiding key questions in their entirely (e.g., did Trump lose the 2020 election?) or shapeshifting Trump policies aimed at benefitting his rich cronies at the expense of “the rest of us” into the exact opposite.

But while lying has always been a fact of life in politics and corporate greed, the sophistication of lying is now a finely-honed science reflecting massive efforts by psychological mavens to create easily assimilated obfuscation and mythology with clever labels with a tiny dash of truth covering up a tsunami of lies. A recent example: ExxonMobil, in its greenwashing of its core and highly polluting, often extremely toxic, businesses, has championed “advanced recycling” of discarded plastics as a glorious solution for microplastics and carbon disasters from plastic waste. A major concern of most Americans, plastics recycling was seen as a God-sent technology just when we needed it most.

But there is a catch: it does not work. “California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Monday alleging the company carried out a ‘decades-long campaign of deception’ in which the oil and gas giant misled the public on the merits of plastic recycling…The complaint accuses the company of using slick marketing and misleading public statements for half a century to claim recycling was an effective way to deal with plastic pollution, according to a press release from Bonta’s office published Monday [9/23]. It alleges the company continues to perpetuate the ‘myth’ of recycling today… The case, filed in the San Francisco County Superior Court, seeks to compel ExxonMobil ‘to end its deceptive practices that threaten the environment and the public,’ the statement said.” CNN, September 23rd.

One of the “it sounds good moments” embraced by the mendacious Mr. Vance was a generic statement that Democrats were embracing censorship against conservatives, the same conservative political forces heavily engaged in book banning. But a mild scratching of the surface of that assertion shows that Vance was in reality seeking a legal right to present massive falsehoods to the public without consequences, often matters that threaten the health and safety of us all, or aim to substitute state legislative bodies for citizens’ voting rights.

I’m Peter Dekom, and here is my boldface update of an 1862 statement by Abraham Lincoln: “A house divided against itself – where basic truth is replaced by toxic lies – cannot stand”