The Greater Deceit

A friend of mine wrote me the other day, citing a quote by John Boehner and saying that “It's disgraceful that the Speaker of the House of Representatives would repeat provably false statistics about our economy.” Don is a good guy, and we’ve had some lengthy, interesting and very enjoyable political discussions, but he still has the illusion that elected officials have things like honor and decency. Why he would think that of anyone in elected office, let alone a Republican, escapes me.

Well. I can't say that I really care about John Boehner's lies, because I assume that if any politician is speaking he is lying, be he Republican, Democrat or anything else. That applies whether he is campaigning, or whether he is simply telling us why the government or military is doing something. Such as why we are fighting in Afghanistan; "to deny them space in which to plan their attacks." At least that is good grammar, but it certainly is not the reason we have troops dying in a foreign land fighting a people who are no threat whatever to this nation.

I think the bigger deceit is to palm the public off with panaceas like trivial taxes on the rich and token tax cuts for middle class while not dealing with real issues like tens of millions of citizens who have no income on which to pay taxes, or whose income is so small that taxes are the least of their problems, or the real energy problems of the nation, or a collapsing infrastructure, or militarism, or climate change which is destroying the planet on which people live.

I think the bigger deceit is to prate about the generosity of the income tax cuts that you’ve showered on the middle class when 47% of the people of this nation are so poor that they don’t even pay income taxes. What good is an income tax cut to someone who doesn’t pay income tax?

The party in the White House is devoted to maintaining the status quo and protecting corporatism on things that really matter while giving the public a meaningless little "tax the rich" sales pitch that will make the public feel good but does not actually harm the rich at all and does nothing to improve the lot of the middle class. Or the poor, about whom we no longer even speak. They propose a $50 billion "stimulus" which is so trivial as to not even qualify as a token in the face of the tens of millions unemployed.

Which is the greater deceit, a lie, or saying nothing masked in words that sound like more than they really are? Lenin had some thoughts about that.