Culture of Lies

Tucker Carlson, of all people, loves to claim that conservative commentators use measured arguments while liberal pundits are full of crap. But there is nothing measured about the debate on, say, abortion. To insist that a small bundle of cells should have the same rights as a living, breathing woman is neither measured, logical nor reasonable.

So just who are these measured conservative commentators? Let’s examine the most visible. Ann Coulter tops the list. Just today, she declared that liberal Supreme Court Justice Stevens should be given rat poison. There’s the makings of a fine, reasoned debate. And what about conservative Christian Mullah Pat Robertson? His latest grotesque and superstition-based statement attributed Ariel Sharon’s stroke to holy punishment for “dividing God’s land.” Nothing measured there. Who else? Bill O’Reilly? Rush Limbaugh? Ralph Reed? It’s hard to imagine a more angry, hate filled, bile spewing group of hyperbolic, unmeasured blabbermouths.

Tucker Carlson was really saying this: The conservative movement is based on fear mongering, faulty assumptions, fallacious arguments and superstition, but these flaws can be obscured by the blatant lie that our arguments are measured. If we just keep saying we are measured, people will begin to believe us, and it will slowly become “fact-like.”

In other words, their movement is based on lies. By the consistent, pervasive use of lies, they can slowly alter people’s perceptions of the truth and make the changes they want to make. They can shift more money to the wealthy. They can take more away from people who they feel don't deserve help. They can impose their religious superstitions on those who don’t share them. They can rape the land for short-term gain. They can create a more segregated society. They can put women back into their places.

President Bush has become a poster boy for lies. This week, he said of Supreme Court nominee Alito, “His judging isn’t about personal ideology.” Which was an outright lie. Judge Alito’s track record clearly demonstrates the opposite. But Bush wants to promote the lie that conservative judges aren’t activists. They decide cases based on a higher principle…the conservative principle! Thus, because they rule the way conservatives want, they are good people, and good people, by definition, can’t be activists.

What nonsense. But many people buy the lie. Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer said yesterday on Fox News that the Palestinians who elected Hamas aren’t interested in ending corruption. According to him, they are all savvy, grown up voters who know perfectly well that a vote for Hamas is a vote for terror and killing, just the way they like it. Well, apparently their voting public is a lot more savvy than ours, because every time President Bush addresses a crowd, you’d think he was talking to a group of toddlers.

You see, they got them “wea-puns of mass de-struc-she-own.”

We’re gonna give ‘em what’s called “dem-ah-cruh-see.”

President Bush has succeeded not because voters are sophisticated and appreciate measured arguments. He has succeeded because people can be manipulated by big, bold lies. And conservatives have lying down to a science.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan insisted that “domestic spying” was an inappropriate description of what the government has been doing, because the phone calls being monitored have been “international,” that is, from America to a foreign nation or vice versa. The fact that we are spying on the domestic portion of potentially millions of calls no longer matters, in his view, because they are “international.” How stupid does he and his boss think the American people are? Pretty stupid, obviously. And perhaps they are right, given the victories produced by their lying.

When President Bush and John Kerry debated, Kerry blew the President out of the water, which was a wonderful contrast between the measured thinking of a moderate liberal and the hysterical, hollow sloganeering of conservatism. But the lies that were told about Kerry before and after ruined his presidential bid.

Until journalists grow spines and hold leaders accountable for their statements, the truth is in trouble. But with biased drama queens masquerading as journalists, like Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter, it’s difficult to see that happening any time soon.