Truth, Fiction, and Politics
It has been an assumption since the Nixon era that politicians lie. It is likely that this was just impressed on that generation more forcefully and politicians always have had an uneasy truce with fact. Mr Obama currently is making hay (apparently) piping the notion that the Bush administration (as I predicted he would) is at fault in the current banking kerfuffle. Read a little from a nominally unbiased economist like Ms McArdle (she’s says she’s voting for Obama on this one). Here for example, she points out that Mr Obama’s claim that GOP policies are “high test hooey”. Here is another and this and finally this. Read them, they are a cogent analysis of what happened by an trained economist.
The point is the political hay that Mr Obama is making is based on a lie. A fiction, a twisting of circumstance, which he is using to his advantage. This is not the only such example, there are many more and Mr Obama is not the only person in this race doing similar things. The point is Mr Obama claims to be different (and is thought to be smart). The other reason, of course, is that I am not an Obama partisan. However, he likely knows exactly what he is doing and is intentionally misleading the public.
Perception ultimately is more important in the election cycle than fact. Nobody is going to “call” Mr Obama on this particular fiction. Mr McCain can’t because to do so can’t be put in a 6 second sound bite. Nobody is going to read the links above in any detail.
PS. Where did all the hope/change nonsense go? Has Mr Obama stopped using it, or have people just stopped noting it?
Filed under: Democrats • Ethics & Morality • Government • Mark O. • Politics • Republicans
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Great post! I’m so fed up with this vile slander and unmitigated lies passing as “politics”. I made the same point on my own blogpost today.. and more!!
Blame Socialist DemocRATS for Financial Meltdown!
That’s funny, Sillie. You’re fed up with slander and lies and then you call Democrats, “socialist” and “DemocRATS.” Do you recognize the irony?
No irony there, Danny. Just ignorance. Yours.
It’s a good thing you’re fed up with vile slander and unmitigated lies, then, Miss Aptly Named.
LOL … perhaps so, but not for THIS reason. If you’re so smart, why don’t you refute the lies with your version of the so-called “truth”? If Obama’s and the Left’s definition of “change” ISN’T socialism, then what is it? Socialism = state control of the means of production”. They create regulations that BANKRUPT companies, and then they move in to take them over when they succeed in doing so.
You’re just too blinded by … what? Satan? Greed? Ignorance? Political Naivete—-> insert cause here, lest I “judge” you.
Democrats and Republicans and just about everyone agree that we all want SOME regulations. We don’t want a wholly free market, where companies have no parameters on their policies. I suspect that you and I both agree that we WANT a regulation on the factory next door that has toxic waste that stops them from disposing of their waste next to our fence, in our air or in our groundwater.
We all want regulations to at least some degree. That you might want some different regulations or slightly fewer regulations than I do does not make you or me a socialist.
You are correct, socialism is state control of the means of production. Obama nor McCain want to have state control of the means of production. They both agree that some regulations on that production is reasonable.
I suspect you and I agree, and so we are all capitalists.
No blindness on my part. Just some honesty and a desire that we stop slander.
On that point, I agree with your comments, if not your actions.
Well if you could define how I “slandered” the SOCIALIST agenda of Democrats, I would take it back. But I’m not wrong and a whole lot of people in this country are seeing it too.
Furthermore, I did not dispute the degree of “regulation”, but the INTENT of it.
For decades, Democrats have been demagoguing about race, ethnicity, gender, sexual perver… “preferences”, etc. and dividing people according to group identity politics. Then they brought their cultural subversion into the so-called “regulatory” process. They “reinvented” government and “reimagined” the basis of credit and financing away from sound financial and credit principles and forced the financial world to extend loans and mortgages on those social definitions, a/k/a “social justice”, “progressivism”, yada yada. Consequently, the bankers, investment houses, even the underwriters jumped on the gravy train, loaning money like it was growing on trees, fueled the real estate “boom” loaning money to every body who lined up for a handout. And when they couldn’t pay, BANRUPTED THEMSELVES.
You cannot for one minute tell me that they didn’t do it INTENTIONALLY. All that social demagoguery of setting rich against poor, white against black, women against men, the older against the young, the haves against the have nots… ALL OF THAT IS WHAT DEFINES THE POLITICS OF THE LEFT.
If they TOLD people that “regulating” the financial markets based on something OTHER than “ability to pay” would bankrupt it, nobody would listen to them! So they had to resort to demagoguing in order to advance their “progressive” SOCIALIST agenda by STEALTH.
That’s why I say they are RATS and SNAKES. And that’s NOT slander.
Wow. Umm, US Democrats are not socialists (except for maybe one or two, who are Socialist Democrats).
Calling them that is slander and rumor-mongering. Calling them rats and snakes is childish and/or slander.
How old are you?
Lizzie, as the Head Stone(tm) here, I’m going to have to step in and ask you to take it down a notch or two. If you want to make a point, we’ll let you make it, but the name-calling is going a bit over the top.
I understand what you’re trying to say, but you’re writing as though you’re yelling and ranting. Doesn’t change minds, and doesn’t look good on you.
Thanks.
You’re right Doug. My apologies for letting my feelings get the best of me.
and PS Doug:
Not to justify or excuse my “rant”, but simply as a point of information: I am a naturalized American immigrant from a communist country.
You can’t possibly imagine what it feels like to lose your country, not once, but twice in one lifetime… and pretty much to the tune of the same propaganda, and corruption.
Unfortunately, many Americans are blind to that reality, and they will suffer accordingly. All I can say is “they have been warned” – by folks like you (nice) and folks like me (not as nice, but “been there, done that”).
Thanks for listening.
We’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.