Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Republicans and the death of truth









     Donald Trump is not the only politician who can let his mouth fall open and utter a lie so bald it takes your breath away. 
     There is also Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. 
     Did you hear his remark at the late-night press conference celebrating Congress closing in on birthing the GOP's horrendous and obscene tax reform bill? This giveaway to the wealthy, the pillage of middle and lower income America that it's been preparing in secret and ramming through the House and Senate?
    McConnell said:
     "After eight straight years of slow growth and under-performance, America is ready to take off."  

     Words fail me. Which doesn't happen much as a writer. Sincerely, they do. So instead I am going to share a graphic. This is the stock market under Barack Obama's administration, with Trump's tacked on the end:


    Am I the only person who remembers the economy Obama inherited in January, 2009? The banks and financial service companies imploding? The car industry about to collapse? I understand partisanship, and it is nothing new. But this is the death of truth. This is disease. This is mendacity so extreme it is alien to both our country's past and its future. Yet people believe it. Lying Republicans have joined hands with a shameless right wing media to create a sector of the electorate that will believe anything, accept any premise, that lives on fantasies and delusions and conspiracy theories. That runs on malice. The kind of partisan blindness we are used to reading about in dystopian fiction. Black is white. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. This is our future unless patriotic Americans who value the freedom of truth find a way to stop it.


5 comments:

  1. When Obama took office the world economy was imploding. The auto industry was in a death spiral, the mortgage industry had been gamed by Wall Street and was in freefall. We were in two endless wars of choice, the banking system was on the brink of collapse, gas was $4 a gallon, and on and on. Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the worst terror attack in US history, continued to run free.

    Obama took care of all of these problems, killed bin Laden, created a health care system that helped all Americans while running a scandal free administration with grace and dignity.

    For his efforts his was demonized by racists and ideologues and now his work is being dismantled by wealthy thugs at the expense of working people.

    So yes, McConnell is a spectacularly dishonest liar. And he has lots of company.

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  2. When I was younger, I was part of the GOP and the conservative movement. I was President of my university's Young Republican chapter. Times have changed and so have both the GOP and conservatism. Principle has been trumped (pun intended) by power and politics. Winning is the only thing and so I am not surprised by the lying that's going on. They have no shame. The irony is in how so many of them say that they are Christians like Roy Moore but they seem to have forgotten that Jesus said it was no gain to get the whole world at the cost of one's soul.

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  3. The Republicans and the right-wing media howled and screamed, over and over, that the rescue of the economy through the stimulus engineered by Obama and the Democrats was a "disaster," a "catastrophe," etc. etc. Apparently if you lie loud enough and often enough, lots of people will believe you.

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  4. The Republicans have succeeded in taking us back 100 years to pre-depression excesses for the wealthy while stripping all protective regulations. When the fallout comes, they'll blame the Democrats, including Obama, as usual.

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  5. Pretty soon the coal mines and steel mills will reopen and the border wall will be under construction. We’ll have a chicken in every pot and 40 acres and a mule. Sick people will be treated at ERs and hospitals will forgive the debts. I know Trump supporters who are still believers, if anything more so. “There is too much political correctness these days,” they say.

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