February 3, 2006 6:07 AM

Culture (of corruption) Club

Surrounded by lies

I keep going back to the dishonesty that surrounds us every day. We are lied to, day in and day out, on important and unimportant things — from war to facial creams. We are bombarded with falsehoods and, the shame of it is, we’ve stopped caring…. Yet everywhere I look there are lies that seem bigger and more obviously dangerous. It’s a level of dishonesty that Harold Pinter, in his lecture last month to the Swedish Academy while accepting the Nobel Prize in literature, called “a vast tapestry of lies.”

It’s become fashionable to pillory James Frey for lying in his memoir-cum-novel “A Million Little Pieces”, which is suddenly an apt description of the condition of his reputation and his literary career. If we back away from the frenzy for a moment, though, it’s not difficult to see that James Frey is not the problem, rather the latest manifestation of a culture that devalues and disrespects the truth to such a large degree that it is often no longer possible to distinguish between truth and fiction.

The problem is all around. It can be found in the White House and academia, in Congress, in the business world and the Catholic Church, in the Republican Party and Evangelical Churches, in the Democratic Party and…well, you get the idea. I grew up being taught that a man’s word is his bond. Saying that you would do something meant that it would be done- no questions and no worries. Now, I can’t help but think what a quaint, naive state of mind that is today. Call me cynical, but when we are lied to on a daily basis by politicians and clergy who think nothing of their prevarications, can we rightly claim to be surprised when our children grow up with a warped view of the truth (The “truth”? It’s whatever gets you out of trouble and/or keeps you from being held accountable.)?

So many of our elected leaders lie with indifference, fully expecting we will go along with their deceptions — and we do. We accept it all, even the glaring contempt inherent in their refusal to give us careful and accurate explanations.

Weapons of mass destruction are claimed as a reason for war but turn out not to exist; our president fails to tell us he has bypassed the law in order to spy on American citizens. Many of us are outraged but not surprised.

Even those of us who are outraged know that nothing will happen, because Our Glorious Leader is surrounded by like-minded Republicans who see it as their job to keep him in power so that they may maintain their own positions of power. Truth has become relative, merely a means for the current party in power to maintain their King of the Hill status.

The American sheeple have become so undemanding of Republicans that lies have become to be viewed as simply the cost of doing business. Consider the fact that a Democratic President was impeached for lying about getting his helmet polished by a zaftig intern, but a Republican President who lied his way into a never-ending war of occupation in Iraq is hailed as a hero and defender of American freedom. What’s worse- a stained blue dress or 2,200+ dead American soldiers? If you can’t figure that one out, we’re in worse shape that I’d feared.

Of course, it’s not just politicians and prospective justices who evade the kind of frankness that serves the public’s interest. Philip Morris lied for years about the risks of smoking until a series of lawsuits exposed the company’s deliberate deceptions. As part of a master settlement, the major cigarette companies have made payments to settle state lawsuits of more than $55 billion, including $7.5 billion in 2005 alone.

And the numerous drug scandals that have erupted in the world of sport, despite slick spin by handlers, have left fans angry and disillusioned with former heroes such as Barry Bonds and Marion Jones.

Let’s not forget the many Catholic priests accused of abusing children — so many, in fact, that Texas lawyer Sylvia Demarest has compiled a database containing the names of about 2,600 perpetrators. It may not contain the exact number of lies uttered publicly in defense of these men, but we all know they are legion.

We are manipulated, too, by the clever deceptions of speech writers who choose words not for accuracy but to sway public opinion. As Pinter said, “We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.’ ”

Let’s face it; most Americans simply don’t care what is being done in their name outside our borders. It should be no suprise then that spin-meisters and liars rule the day. When people aren’t paying attention, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to make your propaganda/talking points the “truth”- and when the truth can be so easily manipulated, what does that say about the state of American democracy? Democracy requires participation. When you no longer participate, you are ceding control of your political fate to those whose agenda you may not necessarily support.

We live in a day and age when soundbites rule, when the “truth” can be established in convenient five- and ten-second clips on the evening news. What we have lost in this process is any sense of context, of what is happening in the bigger picture. This is why “talking points” and “framing an argument” have become so important. Intelligent, informed debate is so passe, because who has the time or inclination to devote the time and energy to truly understanding an issue anymore? Americans don’t want to know, they want to BELIEVE, because to believe means knowing that something is correct and unassailable…plus, you don’t have to devote any mental energy to question a belief’s validity, since the very nature of believing makes something “correct”.

In the final analysis, we are lied to day in and day out BECAUSE THE AMERICAN SHEEPLE ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN. The next time you feel the need to complain about a public official or a CEO being something less than truthful, try taking a good, long look in the mirror. Then, and only then, will you learn why it is possible for this behavior to continue unchecked.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on February 3, 2006 6:07 AM.

OK, so he wasn't a math major.... was the previous entry in this blog.

And the American sheeple have allowed it to continue is the next entry in this blog.

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