Lies Lies and More Lies
What can be made of the fact that the American people do not seem to be terribly affronted by lies told by Presidents? I have been thinking a lot about this recently. I don’t know that I have come up with any real answers.
George W. Bush is not alone in telling lies to the American public. In fact, it seems that lots of Presidents in recent memory have told whoppers too. Listing the majority does not take a lot of time.
Truman lied about the targets of the atomic bomb attacks on Japan being against military targets. Kennedy told us that the US Government was not helping anyone invade Cuba when that was clearly not the case (Bay of Pigs). Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin which ended up being important to the escalation of the war in Viet Nam. Reagan lied about Iran Contra. Clinton lied about “having sex with that woman”. And we know that George W. Bush has fabricated the reasons why his administration wanted to attack Iraq.
The only President who lied and actually paid a price for it was Nixon. He probably should have stayed around and taken his chances against an impeachment as it appears that we don’t care about Presidential lies very much.
Clinton lied and there was much moral outrage from Republicans. I chalked up the fact that most Americans did not seem to be too upset about this to the fact that Bill lied about an extramarital consensual sexual affair. But how does this square with all the other lies told that ended up in the loss of a few to thousands of lives lost?
I suppose we could say that the fact that people did not get too upset about the bombing of Japan was that it was something that happened to ‘them’ and not to us. History spins the idea that the war was shortened by this act and that might be correct. Most people tend to hang on even after the fact of their loss is inevitable. While the South can get upset about Sherman and what happened to them at the end of the Civil War, the fact is that the South did not surrender. Germany did the same thing which resulted in terrible bombings and firestorms as in Dresden. For me this does not excuse our decision. We carry a heavy burden of being the only country to ever actually use a nuke against another country.
During the attacks on Clinton by some of my conservative associates I brought up the issue of Reagan’s lies about Iran Contra. No one disputed that Ronnie did lie. They pretty much made the argument that the end in that case justified the means. One did say that technically Ronnie did not lie to the American people – just to Congress. The fact that Congress is our representative did not seem to faze him.
Kennedy and Johnson used these kinds of lies to involve the US in war just as Bush has done with Iraq. Some Americans will get bent out of shape over lies. I just wonder if they are a good thing to focus on in order to get our regime change. The only time lies did work before was the one President who voluntarily quit. Perhaps this indicates that Nixon actually did have a conscience. I doubt that Shrub has one. And it appears that the majority of Americans rationalizes the justification of the lie, or accepts the lie because of a belief in the liar, or perhaps cynically believes that all politicians are inherent liars.
12:29:45 AM 
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