The mistruths of politics
There are no small number of accusations lately that — shocking as it may be — some of our politicians are lying to us.
Some Republicans shouted the “L” word during President Biden’s State of the Union Address, when he said Republicans wanted to end Social Security and Medicare.
Freshman Republican George Santos spun a lot of yarn during his campaign and many of the things he claimed — such as where he went to high school and college and many other things — were simply untrue.
And Biden himself, reports Reason, makes claims about his policies that makes his even supporters roll their eyes.
Reason refers to last summer's Inflation Reduction Act, which the president claimed would tame inflation, which does nothing to tame inflation, according to CBS News.
As Reason points out, all of our recent presidents have practiced in their share of mistruths:
“… Joe Biden hardly invented political lying, especially among presidents. His recent predecessors in the Oval Office lied about everything everywhere all at once (Donald Trump), health care policy (Barack Obama), pretexts for war and torture, (George W. Bush), and sex (Bill Clinton).”
And the truth is politicians tell mistruths because we want them to.
When advancing our country’s interests around the world, we want our leaders to be more clever than the dictators we want them to outwit, and cleverness often requires deception.
We punish politicians who tell us we are going to have to cut back on spending or the country will go broke — as we reward those who tell us not to worry about our $31 trillion debt and that we can most certainly afford more goodies for all.
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Copyright 2023 Tom Purcell, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
