Why the lies?
by Peter W. Johnson

There have always been lies and conspiracy charges in American politics. One of my earliest memories of being aware of this fact was during the smear campaign against Barry Goldwater during his bid for the Presidency in 1964. At that time his critics circulated the myth that he was just dying to drop the Atomic bomb on North Vietnam—in fact they nurtured the false perception that he couldn’t wait to exercise his authority to do so! But the reality was that he had only issued the standard candidate’s answer to whether he supported all options—when asked if he would use nuclear force he merely stated that, everything was on the table for consideration—a prudent response to a routine question. But after a few film snippets and a few carefully orchestrated sound bites, many Americans believed that he was an incorrigible hawk—someone willing to go to any extreme!

In a more recent campaign between G.W. Bush and John McCain in the Republican primary of 2000, McCain suffered the slings and arrows of an outrageously run Bush campaign in which he was attacked with amazingly malicious claims such as that, his time as a POW in Vietnam had dangerously affected his sanity, and that he had fathered an illegitimate black child with a prostitute. Not only was this a blatant attempt at a racist smear, but in regards to his imprisonment in Vietnam, McCain was portrayed as a suspicious sort of, “Manchurian” candidate, who couldn’t be trusted with the nation’s security.

Of course the truth is that one of McCain’s daughters was adopted from Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh, and, because of her racial heritage, her skin was darker than that of McCain and his wife, while the suffering he endured as a prisoner in Vietnam may have actually increased his wisdom and capacity for compassion.

The credit for these ruthless attacks of course, belongs appropriately to Karl Rove, who is no stranger to spreading distortions and outright lies—especially if they help win political contest. At one point an apparently contrite Bush attempted to heal McCain’s outrage, by asking him to take no offense personally as a result of his cut-throat politics. But McCain angrily rebuffed him. And, many journalists still claim that the Senator still feels deep resentments as a result of Rove’s and Bush’s dishonest ploys.

Let’s also not overlook Rove’s successful poisoning of the Presidential race between G.W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004, when he successfully besmirched Kerry’s record as a PT boat commander in Vietnam—using false eye-witness accounts from veterans who allegedly had witnessed “the truth.” In the end, the general consensus was that the witnesses had lied to keep Kerry from being elected, and the scandal was discredited and disproven shortly before the election. But by that time the lie was indelibly imprinted upon the publics’ mind — and it was too little too late—Kerry lost.

If instances like these were happening only occasionally, and only sometimes successfully destroyed political reputations by using deliberate lies, that would be one thing. But, unfortunately, in recent years most of us can see that what was once the exception, has now become the rule. And now there are huge amounts of money available to fortify dishonest campaign strategies! Shortly before the 2012 elections, the Snopes.com, website determined that after less than four years in office, there had been 253 rumors about Obama, almost all of which were false. Much of this animosity seems to be, at least in part, due to the fact that Obama is a black, liberal, President with an Arabic sounding name—which alone is enough to keep the gossip mills turning for decades.

Here is a list of just SOME of the commonly told lies about President Obama:

1. He is a Muslim.

2. He is a Socialist.

3. He created “death panels” as part of the ACA legislation.

4. He wants to prohibit and confiscate all guns (even though he did not propose any gun legislation at all during his first term).

He faked the death of Bin Laden (even though virtually every member of Congress accepted proof provided by the administration.)

His character itself has been assassinated in numerous ways that portray him as arrogant i.e. that he is self-serving, refuses to compromise with Republicans, wants to suppress Constitutional rights, and, is a slacker.

And, last but not least, he wants to outlaw fishing.

One of the most recent gaffes he made (used against him in the 2012 elections) was his famous “you didn’t build that” comment. By this he meant only that no one succeeds in business without at least some support from the government, and the work of many other Americans, who build roads, build the factories, consume corporate products, etc. If the President was guilty of anything at all, it was that he used a poor choice of words and clumsy phrasing. But, when resurrecting examples of this kind of injustice, I should also point out that Romney said many things that were taken way out of context—like his supposed, “I like to fire people,” statement. Surely if he were given enough room to expound on, and convey his full meaning, which could then have been accurately reported by the press, we would have seen that he was only discussing a business philosophy—not literally taking pleasure in seeing others lose their jobs.

In a recent issue of Time (the 6-3-13 issue) even conservative columnist Rich Lowry, accuses Obama of doing something I have never heard the President do—he claims the president, “constantly congratulates himself for being the only man in Washington above Politics.” However, although he is much like any politician who must wheel and deal to push an agenda forward—perhaps he is resented primarily because he had the gall to point out that, political office can be used in two ways—to enhance ones own career and success, or, to perform valuable services benefitting one’s own constituency.

If one wants to uncover a few more of the many characteristically absurd rumors continually being circulated about Obama, one need only view the “Viral Spiral” section of FactCheck.org. Here are just a few of the outrageous Internet rumors about him found there, which are commonly known not to be even remotely truthful;

His administration is attempting to eliminate private 401ks and IRAs in preference to a “national retirement system.”

The Department of Homeland Security maintains a “standing army of government youth” known as FEMA Corps.

Obama accuses our veterans of “selfishness and whining” and would force them to “pay for their war injuries.”

American Muslims will be exempt from the health care mandate.

The President wants to give away several Alaskan Islands to Russia.

Obama issued a policy that, “no US serviceman can speak at any faith-based public event.

Obama plans to deny brain surgery for patients over 70 years old.

And the real kicker—the President secretly passed a law making it a crime to protest against him or even ask a question he doesn’t like!

There are literally dozens more that appeal to various negative emotions, like hatred, distrust and fear. You can check them out yourself at FactCheck.org.s Viral Spiral list.

However, one of the most absurd rumors ever spread about Obama has to be the so-called “birther conspiracy,’ which would have us believe that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, but rather in his Grandmother’s home place in Kenya, and that his birth was cleverly registered as happening in Hawaii—thus fraudulently enabling him to become our President/

This work of amazing propagandizing and devious political artistry has its origin in an edited recording made by Anabaptist Minister, Ron McCrae, who supposedly captured Obama’s paternal grandmother, Sarah Obama, admitting that Obama was really born in Kenya. But The President’s grandmother doesn’t speak English, so an interpreter had to act as her translator. McCrae can clearly be heard on the recording asking several leading questions which culminate in asking if she was present during Obama’s birth in Kenya. Unfortunately, it is obvious that Sarah Obama’s understands of that question was partially obscured in translation—she thought McCrae was asking her if she had been in Kenya, WHILE Obama was being born in Hawaii. So she answered “yes.” When the flustered interpreter realized the mistake, he clearly said, “Sir, she says he was born in Hawaii!” and Obama’s grandmother is heard affirming that this is the actual truth.

The tape can be listened to at a link provided at FactCheck.org in an article about the birther conspiracy. I personally listened to the tape, and it is absolutely clear that the translator makes every effort to make sure McCrae understands that Obama WAS, in fact, born in HAWAII —NOT KENYA.

Unfortunately, Republicans have become so dedicated to opposing anything that might make the President look good, that they have even opposed solid proposals that would have created real jobs—just so they could continue blaming the recession on him. They actually voted down a veteran’s jobs bill that Obama supported—and amazingly, four Republican Congressmen who helped write the bill, actually decided to vote against their own bill!—giving the definite impression that they have now become circus clowns comically tumbling out of a clown car.

Then there are little thing like, the purposeful mischaracterizations and the willful concealing of solid climate science in order to protect the interests of big coal and oil companies.

For this scam, the fox was (amazingly) put in charge of the hen house by issuing false claims from bought and paid for “scientists” and “experts,” who claimed that there was little proof that man-made CO2 emissions were causing, or even contributing to, global warming. This snow job was enabled by, and accomplished by, large oil companies and conservative groups who received large sums of money in order to cloud the actual findings of authentic climate scientists. These include front groups like the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, and, the American legislative exchange council, aka (ALEC) now well known as the conservative organization in charge of organizing Republican interests and strategies nation wide. And there are many more organizations to which Exxon Mobile donated a cumulative amount of $15,837,073 just to spread false misinformation about global warming between the years 1998-2005. The Union of Concerned Scientists has published an extensive study of these scams titled, “SMOKE, MIRRORS AND HOT AIR,” which compares the tactics used by big oil companies, to similar misinformation tactics used by big Tobacco companies.

What most concerns me though, is that, the extreme levels of lies and misinformation in our contemporary culture also extend to those religious groups trying to prevent the Theory of Evolution from being taught in our public school’s science classes.

They seem to really believe that they are being religiously persecuted by a perverse and Godless government that has fiendishly refused to rend the Wall between Church and state just to please them. Like true theological ideologues they live in hermetically sealed philosophical rooms that let in absolutely no light or air—since this might endanger them with real information that “tempts” them away from trying to monopolize the world’s understanding of supposedly objective truths, and/or political ethics. But, until they acknowledge and accept at least some small semblance of reality—all of the world’s great religions will be caught up in their own personally narrow, theological wars, while accusing the others of spreading violence and evil. What they don’t see is that, if the world really does end, they might be considered as sharing a large part of the blame! Unfortunately, anything that might open their minds to reality is now being regarded by them as suspect and dangerous!—slippery slope kind of stuff.

Some people brush off all of this intense worship of subjective truths, by attributing it to, “politics as usual,” or by saying “boys will be boys.” But when a free society is forced to march to the tune of madmen, who desperately want to control the keys to the mental ward, this is a dangerous trend—a real slippery slope!

If special interest groups are able to deny and obscure the public’s knowledge of climate science, in order to promote their own profits, it is downright sin—a sin because we are now beyond the 400ppm level of CO2 in the atmosphere—causing most scientists to fear that we have already gone past “the tipping point”—a level of climatic disruption that cannot be reversed and will in fact, become worse—if we continue our current orgy of fossil fuel use. If not for the malarky spread by ignorant ideologues, we might already have created a world that is safe and easily livable for our children—but that is now perhaps, impossible!

The only reason that more than three decades have already been spent denying our present climate crisis—while we only now, have begun to believe such “inconvenient truths—is that the cat is now finally out of the bag and we have become plagued by all kinds of disastrous weather events such as, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, heat waves, blizzards etc. We can no longer deny the wisdom of those impertinent global warming schemers who saw all of this coming more than three decades earlier. So, do we still want to believe that their predictions have all been, just “lucky”?

This trend towards the denial of reality is becoming apparent in nearly every area of our lives. And, I believe that our entire obsession with telling lies and crafting conspiracy theories in order to explain away what we refuse to understand is the real problem which threatens us all today! In a world where nothing true is believable anymore, and where political agendas are won and lost on the basis of outrageous and devious subterfuge, human freedom cannot really exist.

We may get answers that temporarily assuage our fears, but, what will we do, if the world of Orwell’s “1984” becomes reality, and the only thing certain anymore (as stated in “Animal Farm”) is that some animals really are more equal than others?

Peter Johnsons is a senior citizen who has become much more interested in what is happening in America and the world, than he was as a young man. He’s interested in poetry and expository writing, and has had letters to the editor published in Time magazine, Newsweek and Playboy magazine. He is concerned about ignorance and indifference that has been circulated concerning the significance of man made global warming and is dismayed dismayed by the way political lies and corruption are being used to influence the public (apparently free from any penalties or adequate culpability). He frequently writes letters of opinion to the editors of his local newspapers.