When a politician wants to shade the truth or, not to put too fine a point on it, decides to tell a lie, he often hires a public relations consultant to help him do it. But an ethical expert on the art of the lie, if he has his client’s best interests at heart has a duty to inform him of the costs of falsehood. It may be surprising to realize that lying carries with it an unavoidable cost. The most obvious is the cumulative cost of keeping up the lie.
Eric Bana, in an interview with TV show Craig Ferguson, provided one of the clearest examples of the price of lying. Bana explained he did not dye his hair out of fear of becoming hostage to the dread Black Helmet, which is “the thing that men get when they decide to cover their grays,” Bana said. Nothing could be worse than wearing an unchanging slab of black hair as one grew older. The price of keeping one’s hair youthful isn’t the price of a bottle of dye, it is the cumulative effort of keeping the rest of the face in sync with the Black Helmet as the visage beneath it ages. That effort increases with time until it finally becomes prohibitive. Keeping reality from showing through the facade of fakery is a full time job.
It ultimately proved too much for Senator John Edwards, who found himself consumed by the increasing cost and effort of maintaining a fiction. The New York Times described the “spectacular rise and fall” of a man who once campaigned to be the President of the United States, now a prisoner in his own home, a victim of his own bottle of sexual hair dye.
a federal grand jury in nearby Raleigh is investigating whether any crimes were committed in connection with campaign laws in an effort to conceal his extramarital affair with a woman named Rielle Hunter. At the same time, Mr. Edwards is moving toward an abrupt reversal in his public posture; associates said in interviews that he is considering declaring that he is the father of Ms. Hunter’s 19-month-old daughter, something that he once flatly asserted in a television interview was not possible.
Still hoping for a cabinet position in the Obama administration, Edwards first sought to contain the secret, by asking “two of his wealthy patrons, through a once-trusted Edwards aide, [to provide] Ms. Hunter with large financial benefits, including a new BMW and lodging, that were used to keep her out of public view.” But the secret wouldn’t stay hidden; and by the end he was a pariah, his career was in ruins and truth was out anyway.
The cost of lying, according to Tobias Lindquist of Stockholm University, “increases with the size of the lie and the strength of the promise”. A classic example of “the bigger they come, the harder they fall” is Bernie Madoff; or if you are inclined to institutional examples, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which everyone knows were “too big to fail”. There may be even more striking examples about, but this is not the place to talk about them.
But even if the liar is not caught, the very prize he seeks to obtain is cheapened by the falsehood. It’s not poetic justice, its economics. In a classic economic paper called “The Market for Lemons” the economist George Akerlof explained why used car lots had such a bad reputation. Buyers eventually factored the commercial patter of used car salesmen into their decisions and discount much of what they hear.
There are good used cars and defective used cars (“lemons”), but because of asymmetric information about the car (the seller knows much more about the problems of the car than the buyer), the buyer of a car does not know beforehand whether it is a good car or a lemon. So the buyer’s best guess for a given car is that the car is of average quality; accordingly, he/she will be willing to pay for it only the price of a car of known average quality. This means that the owner of a good used car will be unable to get a high enough price to make selling that car worthwhile. Therefore, owners of good cars will not place their cars on the used car market. This is sometimes summarized as “the bad driving out the good” in the market. “Lemon market” effects have also been noted in other markets, such as used computers and the online dating “market”. …
The paper by Akerlof describes how the interaction between quality heterogeneity and asymmetric information can lead to the disappearance of a market where guarantees are indefinite. In this model, as quality is undistinguishable beforehand by the buyer (due to the asymmetry of information), incentives exist for the seller to pass off low-quality goods as higher-quality ones. The buyer, however, takes this incentive into consideration, and takes the quality of the goods to be uncertain. Only the average quality of the goods will be considered, which in turn will have the side effect that goods that are above average in terms of quality will be driven out of the market. This mechanism is repeated until a no-trade equilibrium is reached.
A lying political culture does not become the playground of “The Best and the Brightest”; rather it becomes the Market for Lemons, the province of slick mediocrity. One reason there are so many shady men in politics is that the honest men avoid going into it. The ethical consultant of the lie should remind his client that lying, while advantageous in the short run, is like a drug, temporary in its effects; requiring higher and higher doses to maintain the same effect and is finally self-destructive. In that way he can hand his customer the pipe of dreams with a clear black heart. But alas! The supply of ethical spin doctors may be declining. If the media specialists and political consultants are unable to admit the truth about lying even to themselves then the sad stage is reached when there are no honest crooks left to keep the honor of the underworld. Then they become the people they’ve been waiting for; and the medium becomes only the massage.
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The truth shall set you free
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We all lie, to ourselves and to others. We lie about the sins and errors of our past. Christians can hope for absolution; the rest of us can only hope for amnesia.
But we are disqualified from public office. Too many people know about us.
Max jokes about something that is probably true. Does any party really want someone without lots of warts? Because knowledge of the warts affords the party bosses some control in a media age. If a guy goes rogue in office, his own can take him out if necessary. A squeaky clean guy does not afford them that option.
None of us is without sin, or at least a skeleton or two. But there are skeletons, and there are skeletons. The postmodern left tried to filter the facts to hide jamokes like Edwards and protect him from scrutiny and consequences. Then they tried to control the definition of what is venial and what is mortal. But in the end, people still understood what he really was all about.
For those of us who are follicularly challenged, the black helmet was never an option (not counting toupees etc.). You learn early on in life that age and its alterations of appearance are inevitable. Maybe a bald guy is inherently immune from this and should run for office.
Too bad there aren’t too many femaliens (BC woman posters excepted, I trust) who would vote for a bald guy in our age of mass media. Whiskey, feel free to add to that, if you wish.
How one bad apple will spoil the barrel stretched into a essay.
We can speak of the effects of lying or misrepresentation as it is called in politics and media.
But there is no hope of change without a basic moral culture. And there is none to be found in the halls of power.
An issue to be considered is that much is derided as “lies” that are not.
Just because a group does not like the truth does not make it a lie.
If a politician honestly believes the information he is giving to the governed, is he lying?
This is not to imply that there is not such a thing as absolute truth. There is. If I jump off the Empire State building, unless I have made some prior arrangements (like a parasail), no matter how hard I flap my arms, I am due for a really rough landing.
However, we frequently have to deal with others with imperfect information to guide us. To wait until we have perfect truth can cause paralysis. Did George Bush lie about WMD in Iraq? Or did he, using imperfect information, save us from cataclysm? There are times when it is better to err on the side of safety.
However, “You lie!” is far more effective than “You are seriously mistaken and have not even read the d**n document you are trying to shove down our throat.”
I think a lot of us went into no-trade equilibrium o the day the stimulus bill was whooped through –even bringing back a guy from his mother’s funeral –because, said the president, there was not a moment to lose –not a moment to lose! And then he lit out for a four or five day weekend without signing the bill, then held back disbursing it (to this day, what, 15% is spent?) for ‘technical’ reasons.
As if we were not going to wonder why, what with those technical reasons having to do with system information that could not have come in after the vote so must’ve been in hand before the vote, the president would not let us have a glance at the bill, if not during his long weekend getaway (at the end of which he could’ve inked the piece of paper) then say overnight, at least, before the trillion dollar vote. But to bald-faced lie and stampede the people that way, in collusion with congress, and then to seem to think that within the next cycle or two no one would remember or care, is so astonishingly messed up on so many levels that who could ever trust anything this bunch ever says again? For, even when they tell the truth, enough people won’t believe it that whatever is that’s true may as well be a lie. And vice versa, as the message becomes the medium.
What? Tell me some more …… Hope and fear*.
“New Republic Editor-In-Chief: ‘President Is Probably a Clinical Narcissist’”
“And now for the money quote:
What I suspect is that the president is probably a clinical narcissist. This is not necessarily a bad condition if one maintains for oneself what the psychiatrists call an “optimal margin of illusion,” that is, the margin of hope that allows you to work. But what if his narcissism blinds him to the issues and problems in the world and the inveterate foes of the nation that are not susceptible to his charms?
If Obama is a “clinical narcissist” that would make the MSM his enablers since months before he was elected president, they were already portraying him in images and print as having a saintly halo image.” (Veritas odit moras.)
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2009/10/05/new-republic-editor-chief-president-probably-clinical-narcissist
*”Charles Lamb:
“Hope* is charming, lively, blue-eyed wench, & I am always glad of her company, but could dispense with the visitor she brings with her, her younger sister, fear*, a white liver’d-lilly-cheeked, bashful palpitating, awkward hussey that hangs like a green girl at her sister’s apron strings & will go with her whithersoever she goes.”
(Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb)
Gresham’s Law, bad money (counterfeit) drives good money out of circulation.
This happens not only in the market for goods and services but also in social markets. As an organization becomes corrupted by individuals who subvert it to protect their incompetence or dishonesty then people who subscribe to the formal goals of the organization, if it is a voluntary or non-profit entity, will depart. If the organization is a business then the energy consumed by the dishonest and incompetent will impede efficiency and the more competent will depart.
Government organizations are political markets not simply because they are managed by politicians but because there is no objective standard by which an outside observer can judge success and failure, except for when failure becomes catastrophic. At that point the competence of some clerk is not going to be the focus of inquiry so there is effectively no accountability. This happens not only in government but in any large bureaucratic organization due to the Agency Effect. It is hoped that in a business that operates in a free market economic pressures will provide some incentive for owners and managers to weed out the grossly abusive or underperforming. However those who can or will not perform to the benefit of the owners of an organization, the citizenry if a public entity or the owners of a private business, can protect themselves by building a network of other associations so that the operating of the political market, even in a non-governmental organization, can overwhelm the functioning of the formal organization.
Democracy needs a network of informal associations to thrive and they will all function as political markets. These are the voluntary bodies that Alexis de Tocqueville described. Regrettably they will become corrupted over time as those who rely on them to escape the pressures of the formal marketplace subvert them. The personal failings and dishonesty that causes people to rely on political relations for protection can as wretchard notes become increasingly hard to conceal and the effort to do so can consume not only the individual but the organizations that they subvert to their purpose.
The Athenians got tired of hearing Aristedes called “The Just” and voted him out of office.
Often the pundits make their case based upon where a politician stands on the issues. While important, that usually isn’t my first priority. My primary criteria is … do I trust this person? If I don’t trust them it doesn’t matter their stand on the issues.
This is why questionable integrity by politicians is important. It’s an indicator. If Bill Clinton will lie to Hillary (the women he’s vowed to love and be true to), he will certainly lie to his constiutents. If Charlie Rangel will cheat on his taxes he will cheat me.
One of the problems I have with the left is I think it lies to itself. It says people only do bad because of injustice and unequal wealth. This lie, instead of freeing of people of blame diminishes them as moral agents. The only role left them is victims in need of a savior.
And then he lit out for a four or five day weekend without signing the bill, then held back disbursing it (to this day, what, 15% is spent?) for ‘technical’ reasons.
Someone nailed it way back last February. The 85% of it is held in reserve, to be used to bribe crucial constituencies to vote D for the 2010 election.
It is the biggest and crookedest campaign war chest in human history, and we are paying the bill. The Ds knew very well that ramming socialism through Congress in two years would hurt them electorally. Obama’s desperate hurrry in February was simply to set up this cynical reserve, to ensure resources to fix the 2010 election. His ‘concern’ for the poor workers was just an act.
There is a difference between the cost of a lie to the individual, as in Edwards’ case, and the cost to the system of everyone doing it. If the system is in equilibrium, then although the situation may be bad for everyone, no one has an incentive to behave differently. In partucular, no politician has an incentive to behave honestly, because the public will punish him for doing it.
Some academics have argued that politicians who desire re-election are incentivized to tell moderately sized lies but avoid whoppers. The reasoning is that they will report low threats and high threats truthfully but can get away with exaggerating moderate threats, thus threading the path between using scenarios to their advantage and ruining their credibility completely. According to this theory, a salesman selling you survival equipment can exaggerate the frequency of possible threats to his advantage, but must never say “the sky is falling”. Because if it doesn’t fall on the morrow, then no one will listen to him any more.
The problem with this analysis is that it assumes the game will continue, and that the players consequently reckon on the cost of lying and adjust their fibs accordingly. But in scenarios where the game ends after the liar receives the payoff for the lie and there is no “next time” the liar is incentivized to tell a whopper. It’s a one time deal; he has to play it for all it is worth. A robber has no compunctions about impersonating a pizza delivery man to gain entry into a home because he never expects to see you again, whereas a brush salesman or other door to door salesman, might have a line of patter to get in the door, but it will only be moderately untrue, because he might want to see you again.
This is why, I think, populations start to worry when their leaders tell really big lies. When politicians seem heedless of the consequences and numb to the outcome of crying “wolf” even when there is obviously no wolf; or declaring the wolf absent when it is manifestly slavering before you, then it implies they don’t care about lying brazenly: they’re not going to face the consequences and plan on escaping retribution altogether.
One possible real-life example of a situation where extreme dishonesty is possible is the clip-joint, where they don’t care if they lie to you about the price of the drinks that are sold to you or imbibed by the lady hostesses because the bouncer will beat you up if you don’t pay the exorbitant price. When elected leaders start acting like they’re running a clip-joint, then it’s a little bit worrisome.
Continuing the clip joint analogy, what’s more dangerous is when a as individual or collectively we want to be lied to. The classic example is the strip club. The lie is, in that establishment sex, teased or consummated is a satsifactory substitute for love and companionship.
Satan’s true danger isn’t that he tells lies. For the unblinkered that’s obvious. The true danger is he tells lies we want to believe.
This post is about lying about the past present. Is it possible to lie about the future? Are prognostications about the future that are perceived as wildly off the mark by some, such as the validity and effects of global warming or that a national healthcare system will be run better and at less cost than what we have now; are those lies?
For example, ABC is reporting that “the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve lied to the American public last fall when they said that the first nine banks to receive government bailout funds were healthy, a government watchdog states in a new report released today.” Paulson simply regarded the banks as too important to fail and gave them a clean bill of health.
Now, assuming Barofsky is telling the truth (now there’s a problem: how do we know?) then why should we believe the Treasury now? Why? Because it’s being run by the unimpeachable Timothy Geithner right? What eventually happens is that politics becomes like a shady used car lot; and members of the public begin to assume that they are being lied to, at least to some extent, by whoever is in power.
No one appreciates the number of jobs that would have been lost had we not had a little sacrifice spread upon us.
—
Too bad most of us have lived such privileged lives that we can’t appreciate the profound sacrifices the Obamas and the Opra made for us in trying to bring the newly-appreciative World to our shores.
And to atone for our multitudinous sins.
For instance, how could a wealthy Jew-Boy like Jeff Zeldman ever appreciate the suffering?
Family ties – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report
feeblemind asks:
Is it possible to lie about the future?
How about:
You’ll get a check next week.
This won’t hurt.
Real estate is the only good investment, they’re not making any more of it.
There are others of this ilk, but common decency demands I not go any further, but anyone who has been in the army, or hung around a water cooler for a while knows them all.
F/13; …are those lies? –why wouldn’t they be? Say for argument, that the outcome of something can be known, but only by the administration. Why wouldn’t this admin take that, and then deal itself as much added extra self-deal as it deemed possible to get away with? Change of heart over what it has done so far? I guess it’s possible.
Edwards is famous for his “Two Americas” claim – the America of the Rich and that of the Poor. And when it comes to lying, he is correct to a degree. Rich people, especially rich politicians, have the power, money, and influence to lie and get away with it for a long time, or better yet, to game the system. Edwards was pushing for higher taxes on “The Rich” but he was paid by his company in capital gains on his stock – no Social Security taxes, no Medicare taxes, and a reduced tax rate.
Poor people get away with lying because no one cares since it is not enough money to matter, or because they deserve it, or because they are a minority. In fact, in the case of the Community Reinvestment Act, the official policy eventually became to reduce the lies by stop asking the questions.
One of the worst things about working in DC is that you have to lie. People come in and make boldfaced assertions, hurl accusations, draw the resultant conclusions, at 1600 hours and you have perhaps an hour at the most to respond before the accountants cut your funding or Congress takes your silence as evidence of agreement. So you lie back to them, factoring in as much of the truth as you can discover and wallpapering over the messy details. Lying is not an aberration; it’s a way of life. This in turn has devalued the truth. People there are more suspicious of the truth than a lie – it took longer to fabricate and is not as neat and pretty.
“members of the public begin to assume that they are being lied to, at least to some extent, by whoever is in power.”
I suspect that much of what drives the tea party demonstrations is the shared sense that not only are we being offered nothing but lemons disguised as choices by our politicans (of both parties), but that we’ll be forced to swallow them regardless of how loudly we proclaim our preference for something else.
Well, it looks to me like Obama may wel succeed with is “stimpulous” hustle.
Dark times for liberty.
w/14; re Geithner & crew, this is from March of this year, by Robert Scheer, no leftier leftist there is, writing in the hard-left The Nation (and leaving out the gang’s extensive connections to both Enron and the Enron fix, Sarbanes/Oxley, which limbered up the offshore unregistered dark pool strategies we saw rampant in the summer of ’08):
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090406/scheer
We wanted to hire Elliot Ness to go after Al Capone, but got confused and hired Al Capone to go after Al Capone.
***
RWE/18; the official policy eventually became to reduce the lies by stop asking the questions …which is how Medicare happens to have the ‘low administrative costs’ that the healthcare boosters continually use as a main argument in favor of the public option. Medicare enjoys from 60 to 150 billion per year of fraud –usually just people sending in a bill and getting a check back for it.
That’s why the admin costs are so low –there’s nobody watching the till.
Clioman:
We even have proven articulate spokesmen from the left.
(Safeway has a similar program that is very successful)
—
John Mackey The Conscience of a Capitalist
“President Obama called for constructive suggestions for health-care reform,” he explains. “I took him at his word.” Mr. Mackey continues: “It just seems to me there are some fundamental reforms that we’ve adopted at Whole Foods that would make health care much more affordable for the uninsured.”
What Mr. Mackey is proposing is more or less what he has already implemented at his company—a plan that would allow more health savings accounts (HSAs), more low-premium, high-deductible plans, more incentives for wellness, and medical malpractice reform. None of these initiatives are in any of the Democratic bills winding their way through Congress. In fact, the Democrats want to kill HSAs and high-deductible plans and mandate coverage options that would inflate health insurance costs.
The Whole Foods health-care story has been largely ignored by proponents of a government-run system. But it could be a template for those in Washington who want to drive down costs and insure the uninsured.
Mr. Mackey says that combining “our high deductible plan (patients pay for the first $2,500 of medical expenses) with personal wellness accounts or health savings accounts works extremely well for us.” He estimates the plan’s premiums plus other costs at $2,100 per employee, and about $7,000 for a family. This is about half what other companies typically pay. “And,” he is quick to add, “we do cover pre-existing conditions after one year of service.”
Whole Foods also puts several hundred dollars into a health savings account for each worker.This money can be used to cover routine medical expenses, like drug purchases or antismoking programs. If that money is not used in a year, the workers can save the money to pay for expenses in later years.
—
Luddy,
I remember, from the “Ramparts” Daze, that like JFK2, Scheer married an Heiress, but of course has continued to write from the perspective of the oppressed proletariat!
—
Good work by Robert there, however!
Almost gives one hope.
Almost.
Used car salesman extrodinaire, Senator Charles Schumer (D NY), repeating on a Sunday news talk show the Obama lie that the GOP was just the party of “NO” and they had no plans for health car or any other issue. In the first case noting that the more people saw the options the more they approved of the public option. Where the heck did that bit of polling data come from? Who the hell would bother to statistically define such drivel? why would USEDCar salesman extraordinare Charles Schumer think he could announce such nonsense with a straight face and get away with it. He has no respect for the audience of that show or for his constituency.
Why repeat the lie? Why even state such a lie to begin with. Another panelist spinning in mud and factoids drawn from whole cloth cause rags would tend to clean such filth (on another economic issue) was challenged by mentioning that “perception was reality”. This after repeating in seven or eight different ways that the Obama Stimulus was working, despite objective reality and despite the fact of lagging credit markets and a lack of persons seeking credit.
Wonder why that is?
If not for the lies just what would a politician have to offer?
Most folks cannot handle the truth.
personally I clip the gray short in a high and tight it’s not hiding anything and it’s cooler in the summer.
Having recently made declarations that were untrue, and being called on it, I can definately say crow tastes better warm than cold!
Sounds like vibration-rotation spectrum spin to me, aaron.
Shame!
Mongoose: One step closer to The Grande Cleanup. That’s all. Waiting sucks.
I wouldn’t call being wrong about a technical datum a lie, aaron. a lie needs intent to decieve, right?
Wade, re Schumer (can’t make this stuff up) if you remember back to june ’08, there was a lot beginning to go wrong but pundits were still arguing ‘is this a recession, or not?’ –the residual strength of belief was still in the mkts. Schumer must’ve gotten tired of waiting –election coming up y’know –so he ‘stimulated’ (with some ‘accidental’ remarks to the press) the first trouble the general public got shook over, that ‘run’ on Indymac –which due to insiders stuffing it with junk assets was indeed in trouble –tho the pix of lines of panicky depositors was terrible for the system order. Anyhoo it went bellyup and Soros and crew got the good stuff for pennies on the dollar, taxpayers got the bad stuff dollar for dollar and the losses dollar for dollar and change (admin, y’know). now, the reconstituted Indymac, with the connected guys now in formal control, may be in on buying troubled CIT –the middle america red state small biz lender which was #20 on that list of 19 banks the gov’t chose to subsidize, and is for some reason having trouble competing.
I get soothing happy emails from our senators and congresscritter explaining how useful they have been and how noble their endeavors, and now and then a carefully massaged survey to prompt the right sorts of answers from me.
“I say it’s spinnage, and I say the hell with it.”
“Used car salesman extrodinaire, Senator Charles Schumer (D NY), repeating on a Sunday news talk show the Obama lie that the GOP was just the party of “NO” and they had no plans for health car or any other issue. In the first case noting that the more people saw the options the more they approved of the public option. Where the heck did that bit of polling data come from? Who the hell would bother to statistically define such drivel?”
It seems that that people are singing from the same song book.
Congressman “Let grandma die” was repeating his rant, this rant, on Wolf Blitzer when a panel member (presumably Republican) stated calmly that the “Republicans indeed had a plan, a six point plan”, to which Mr. LetGrandmaDie, in a tone that would even be embarassing for a 2-year old, whined “Your point one is Tort Reform and that doesn’t do a thing for anyone.”
So know what is driving this.
Doug/22, re those old days, remember Joan Baez singing “Pretty Boy Floyd”? That high clear soprano,
“well Pretty Boy Floyd…was an outlaw,
they say he was no good,
(something something)
…some rob you with a six gun,
some with a fountain pen….”
***
PM/30; re “…doesn’t do anything for anyone”:
http://www.atra.org/wrap/files.cgi/7964_howworks.html
It’s long been my contention that we live in the information age, yet have a constitution designed for horse and buggy technology. Our constitutional form of government does not account for the fact that we are much better at tracking information. Politicians use their information to tailor messages to constituents and to gerrymander.
While information can help good people determine who to trust, it can also help bad people determine who to crush. We need to modernize government. We need an information branch. All this branch would do is obtain, retain, and prudently release information. People would be selected for this branch solely for their trustworthiness and competence.
This would inject honesty into political discussions. It would also inject honesty into private discussions between strangers. In both cases, it would eliminate the no-trade equilibrium.
#32 – People selected for their competence and trustworthyness … but selected by whom?
Are you seriously openly advocating the establishment of a “ministry of truth”?
Modes of transportation may change but human nature doesnt. That is what has allowed the constuitution to last as long as it has… it [the constitution] takes account of the unchanging chatracteristics in human nature.
c’mon man… leave off dreaming of tomorrow for just a minute and read a little history… or at least a little Orwell.
14Wretchard:
Which begs the question, when people lose faith in the honesty of their politicians, regardless of affiliation, is there a point where they lose faith in the entire system?
T/32; -that’s the problem the ancient oriental courts instituted eunuchs for –
14: Wretchard:members of the public begin to assume that they are being lied to, at least to some extent, by whoever is in power.
should be: by whoever is speaking…
21 Luddy: The highly touted Medicare expense per claim ratios are also based upon the generally higher cost per claim of geriatric medicine. They also do nothing but write checks.
luddy barsen,
The Ottoman Caliphate treated everyone equally. OK, Muslims were more equal than others.
That is they treated everyone like dirt.
Julius Caesar: [of the Grand Eunuch] … a position not acquired without some, shall we say, sacrifices?
H/T IMDB, from Cleopatra (1963)
Buddy/El Heffe, it’s refreshing to see that the trolls are coming back out to try. I thought that they had completely given up.
tomw, any retail private enterprise –with similar trtansaction profile –would start ringing the alarm bells and bringing in the investigators at ‘slippage’ of two cents on the dollar. Medicare has about twenty-five cents slippage on the dollar. most would expect a government op to be able to run at no more than 200% or 300% the slip of a private. but TEN times? What is the problem –at one tenth the slippage, the cost of fraud controls would pay itself. At TEN times, the cost of controls would save about the GDP of France. It just don’t make no danmn sense. A gov’t so staffed and (dis)incentivized can’t possibly ever come anywhere near handling and defraying what it already has gathered in –and it wants another 20% or 40% of the GDP?
This was explained a long time ago by “Gresham’s Law.”
Gresham’s Law pronounced, “Bad money drives good money out of circulation.”
Now how exactly do we get good money and good politicians back into circulation? How do we pump the future Washingtons and the Lincolns into the system?
LotM –i guess it worked to keep them out of the harem –but they seem to’ve intrigued just about as much anyway, chasing power and influence –oh well –worth a try –as long as it’s (*cough*) someone else’s joolz.
Limpet6,
Points up at #7.
So, Richard, is that a new photograph?
@7 Lifeofthemind. Reminds me of an effect that is happening in education. By making medical school too competitive, a large proportion of fools apply thinking they actually have a chance. With a discouragingly low acceptance rate, many intelligent students who may be qualified decide not to bother with the effort and probable rejection.
Thus counterfeit dollars (ego-driven applicants) drive the good dollars out of circulation.
Tocqueville, 1831
When I stepped ashore in the United States, I discovered with amazement to what extent merit was common among the government but rare among the rulers. It is not always the ability to choose men of merit which democracy lacks but the desire and inclination to do so.
In the United States, men of moderate desire commit themselves to the twists and turns of politics…it often comes about that only those who feel inadequate in the conduct of their own business undertake to direct the fortunes of the state….the rulers are often incompetent and sometimes despicable.
Many types of utterance do not more or less perfectly match with experience, however defined. Before you start talking about ‘lies,’ you should define what you mean.
Let me try: To be a ‘lie,’ a statement must 1) be known to the source as untrue, 2) be issued with the intention to deceive, 3) result in harm to the audience, and 4) apply to the past, which is verifiable, not the future.
Any statement about the future has probability, not truth value. The probability of a statement about the future becoming true depends on source evaluation and reference to experience.
What I mean is that most statements by politicians don’t mean jack . . . don’t mean much at all: just noise and the aura of feeling that might surround it.
A few years back there was a very interesting book, “Leaving the Left” by one Keith Thompson, a San Francisco liberal/environmentalist, former Metzenbaum staffer, who finally realized that so much of what he had to say in order to stay in the activist Left was simply not true based on his own experience and knowledge. He wrote of how liberating it was, even as many of his former “friends” deserted him, to not have to lie to himself many times a day.
I don’t know if anyone has written about how corrupting it must be to the Left, and maybe the govt in general when peopled by many leftists, to have so much premised on lies. Not just things that might not be true, but actual lies where the person knows they are lies but suppresses that knowledge for some “higher” purpose. The big policy lies leading to the smaller, more mundane and personal ones, then feeding back into bigger corruptions.
Anthropogenic Global Warming comes to mind, as does “diversity” as not just a desirable goal among many, but as the prime directive.
I don’t remember who it was, but also a few years ago someone observed that when conservatives act hypocritically it is to their disadvantage–cheating on their spouse and thereby ruining their marriage, for example. While liberals certainly do that, as well, there is also a form of liberal hypocrisy where the actions against professed belief are to their advantage—such as Michael Moore going to great (maybe illegal) lengths to keep unions out of his production shop, and Nancy Pelosi and husband doing the same re their vinyard and luxury hotel in the California wine country.
#46 – I dunno chief, i think your number 2 is really the only criteria for a lie… intent to decieve.
It is entirely possible to decieve while using factually acurate statements so your number 1 isnt a very good indicator (remember the old cliche “there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics”).
As far as harm to the hearer, wheter a lie does harm or not is a separate issue from wether or not it is a lie (some lies, it can be argued, are not harmful – think placebo effect – though its a very slipery slope) so that takes your number 3 off the table.
as for lies only refering to the past. im sorry but that is patently absurd. There all sorts of frauds/con games based on deliberately decieving people about the future. Case in point: Genesis chapter 3 verse 4… “ye shall not surely die.”
Intent to decieve is the foundational and most basic criteria by which to judge lies or lying behavior. If you get away from that you open up all sorts of room for rationalizations, hypocracy, and by extension lawyers and Ploticians.
Good timing, I received an e-mail note from “The Ladders” talking about resume fibs and how a small one eventually snowballs out of control. They noted that a fib on a Internet posted resume essentially lives forever and even after you remove it from online others (recruiters, reporters, peers, etc) will have that copy and refer to it.
This is why I have withdrawn from active political participation (phone dialing, door knocking, lit dropping etc if a candidate or party wants my involvement they need to and do pay for it). Why is it that political commentators insist that job loss is only a lagging indicator when their guy is in office? There are honest commentators and observers out there but they are in the think tanks.
I observed this in college already and refused to participate. One night I passed out in a sorority house in Madison. The sorority girl I was with and I were on the couch in the basement and she told me she’ld be right back. I attempted to stay awake was long as I could, but she never did come back (not a bad outcome) and I went to sleep on that couch. In the morning I woke up and walked back to Middleton from downtown Madison.
When we got back to our dorm in Platteville my buddy was telling everyone I “got laid”. Well, in truth I did not and instead of leaving the lie lay I explained what really happened. From that point on, I became convinced that about 90% of the stories I heard around the dorm (and continue to hear) are whole or part fabrication.
“lawyers and Ploticians.” I was going to correct this mispelling of politicians… but on second thought I think I will let the original stand.
Marty #47:
John Stossell wrote how he used to be a standard issue Investigative Reporter, doing TV pieces on how Someone Has to Do Something About This Terrible Situation. And he found that when his reporting actually produced some government action, it invariably made things worse, or created problems worse than the one it fixed. He then began to focus on that as the story.
And by the way, he is leaving ABC and going to Fox News. One of the consequences of some in the Left waking up is that it becomes ever more an echo chamber.
Wretchard,
A rather involved explanation for your new photo.
My mate wanted me to dye my hair regularly (around age 50) and it just got to be too much. This despite the fact that I had started greying in my 20s well before I met her.
I do have one thing going for me. At 65 I still have all my (grey) hair. And the same mate.
Having worked professionally for a decade and a half in the professional lying business I can tell you what my friends in the polygraph shop at CIA say.
ALL PEOPLE LIE. ALL PEOPLE.
The blacker the hair the blacker the heart
The wider the smile the same
The silvery the tongue the silvery the hair
Politicos all play the game
To say that they lie is to not tell the truth
For truth is a slippery slope
Where slopes run downhill in direction of change
And up in direction of hope
It’s all in intent if intent is to lie
In which case we’ll know that it’s true
If when he is caught he will whimper and cry
And blame it all on you know who
But love them or hate them we need them because
Without them we’d know not of sin
We’d know not of crimes that should give us all pause
We’d know not that silvery spin
Is needed to lighten the darkening hair
To temper the brilliant white smile
They all look terrific and just to be fair
They look better when in durance vile
Habu,
Welcome back.
I thought there would be some comment, given the topic of lying and its consequences, about the ongoing and daily Hawaii DOH contortions, which seem to involve officials trying to avoid giving out any information about BHO vital records, even of the kinds generally open to the public. There’s a tangled web a-weaving there, I suspect. I have no desire to see information emerge that reveals lying and general deceit on the part of BHO and team. But I confess to enjoy sitting in the bleachers watching the action.
Two things are certain. Either there is something of considerable interest in the records or there is not. If there is something of interest, persons interested in demolition may want to have a good seat for the implosion event.
Habu @ 53
I used to run the department at a very large public agency that developed and funded the agency’s capital program, multi-hundreds of millions of dollars anually. Projects ALWAYS wound up costing way more than we were promised, no matter how much due diligence and analysis we subjected them to. (We did not control the designers and had minimal control over scope creep, I should add.)
One day I asked the person responsible for vetting requested projects for his perspective on this, and his response, talking about those requesting our money for their projects, was poetic:
“The ALL lie… ALL the time.”
I will also note that one person on my staff tracked a range of projects from the first time they were brought to us to the final change order, and she developed “The Universal Coefficient of Expansion,” which was 2.8. That applied from the time the requester was confident enough to come to us with a figure, so it did not even allow for all the early, internal estimates within the engineering area.
Finally, I once asked the head of Architecture why his people couldn’t give us better estimates, to which he replied “Why, if we told you what it would really cost, you would never fund it.” Of course, he knew he had the Executive Director on his side.
Government in action (inaction?).
Mad Fiddler
Speaking of deceit, we have a certifiable idiot masquerading as a leader.
Forget about his problems with security clearance… He refuses to handle the CinC’s “football” because he won’t let his fingers touch pigskin!
Mmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm.
Klaatu Barada Nikto.
49 marcus aurelius
Interesting you should mention resume fibs. I was watching the new episode of 48 Hours the other night; it’s about a woman who was a bank manager and forced to rob her own bank by a trio of crooks who invaded her house. She, her daughter, and her roommate had dynamite with wires attached strapped to their backs and were told that they would be blown up if they didn’t cooperate with the gang.
To make a long story short, the dynamite packs turned out to be fake, but so did part of the bank manager’s resume. While I certainly don’t believe anyone deserves to be terrorized by thugs, I began to lose sympathy for the woman when she admitted on camera that she had lied on her resume to get into banking in the first place. She had been working as a stripper and wanted to do something else with her life (okay, not a bad decision). Although she hadn’t even finished high school, she passed herself off as a college graduate in order to get a job as a teller, after which she worked her way up to become a manager.
Now I grant that this tale also raises the question of academic credentials and why they are required for some jobs for which they are not really necessary. But the more important question for me is the one that Wretchard raised, namely the impact of lying on the fabric of social trust. In my opinion this kind of lying by a relatively ordinary citizen is ultimately as corrosive as the whoppers told by politicians.
Some years back I read a book on lying by Sissela Bok, a philosopher whose husband was then president of Harvard. Bok organized each chapter of the book around a common pretext for lying (doctors lying to patients about their prognosis; whether it’s okay to lie to liars to get even with them; so-called social or “white” lies, etc.). But what really stuck with me was her observation in the opening chapter that a lie is basically a form of coercion. Like force majeure, a lie is a way to compel someone to do something — only it operates on the level of will rather than physical force. She goes on to argue that this is why lies are so destructive psychologically to their victims– a person who has been had typically feels humiliated, cheated, angry, and helplessly frustrated. A successful lie turns the victim’s will, trust, intelligence, and other good qualities against themselves in a way that physical violence does not.
I don’t think it’s accidental that the Biblical tradition depicts Satan as the father of lies.
“I say it’s spinnage, and I say the hell with it.”
james @ 29
No, spinnach has a lot more iron and fiber, this is just some limp and aged frond of pansy I would guess. And the hell with it too.
(B)Luddy Barson, Ah, you made that point before, and I followed it as far as I could and as near as I can see, Lehman and his brothers deserved to go down although it was not a natural death it was legal. As for what followed well at best it was not criminal, at worse it was not criminal. I think it is the art of Judo, that uses the energy of the attack (momentum) to defeat the attack (or some such stuff). In this case Lehman brothers has to be viewed in the role of the attacker, with all of its years worth of momentum taking it down the vortex in as epic spin. With the question remaining what was it they were attacking?
And the wonder is as easily as they were flushed was a plumber involved? Definitely, yes.
As for CIT, I don’t know that the banks which have been offered and accepted government funds are free, or able to compete at a level that makes for consumer confidence. So much bad debt is still on the books, and so much non performing stuff is all the banks can gin up. There has been no easing of credit just a kick of the can down the road. No credit means no jobs, no jobs equates to no wages, no wages infers no revenue, no revenue implies no tax receipts, no tax receipts…well the printing press has plenty of ink and paper, so I’m told.
Habu, yes every one lies but most of us tell the truth more than not. However certain and large numbers of the political class cannot bring but false utterance to their lips save it is a reprise of Jim Carey’s “Liar Liar”. The expectation being that with enough lies told odds are favorable for at least one turning out to be true despite the intention of the author of the lie. But I think it is more like that proverbial Monkey at the typewriter, and more likely the monkey will produce Shakespeare, than truth will emanate from the lips of Franks, or Schumer or Dodd. We don’t need a polygraph to determine that much.
I think the truly abominable lies are those that violate real Truth. That our salvation can come from some man-made entity. That life in this world can be made perfect. That somebody else is responsible for your happiness. That there are people who are so smart that they can make wiser decisions than we can. That all people and cultures are equally valid and good. You will note that the fascists all use this level of lie to seduce the unwary into supporting their causes.
Although this sort of lie is right up there:
Coloradan who posed as wounded Iraq veteran being prosecuted under Stolen Valor Act
“Everybody lies” but ultimately lies are self-limiting at the point when their cost either stops the falsehoods or destroys the liar. Any system requires a modicum of real truth to function. Even unintentional lies or ‘errors’ must never be allowed to totally dominate a system. Otherwise the nervous system or if you will, the control system, MIS, dominant discourse — whatever you want to call it — simply becomes a purposeful misguidance.
One of the most convincing arguments for the assertion that humans can “know” something is that they wouldn’t have survived if they did not. Any organism which systematically believed up was down or couldn’t see lions would fall of a cliff or be eaten. However many counterfeit dollars one has in the pocket, there must be an irreducible quantity of hard currency — truth — in one’s pocket or bankruptcy ensues.
The characteristic of all doomed polities is not the presence of lies, since “all people lie”, but the denial of the existence of the truth. Hence the adage “those who the gods wish to destroy they first make mad”. Madness ultimately means a divorce from reality; an inability to comprehend or acknowledge the existence of the truth. The most damaging thing the MSM did was to convince the people the devil didn’t exist. That, CS Lewis argued, is the neatest infernal trick of all. When they believed their own lies then the circle of craziness was complete. At first they simply took the real dollars out of our pockets and replaced them with fakes; then they paid themselves in fakes and now wonder what went wrong.
Thank you, those who welcome my drive by comment. I have been away for a myriad of life’s reasons. I am still busier than I want to be but am fitting in a few years fun just in case we can’t dislodge the socialist in the WH. Being a WASP, a Republican going back to walking precincts for Barry Goldwater and still believing there’s some merit in General Curtis LeMay’s approach to war I’m simply waiting for the gulags to develop and my name appearing on the list.
Naturally, they will never take me alive.
I do more reading of the site now, and it is still the standard by which others must measure themselves. You folks do a great job.
In the light of strict morality, a lie is a lie, so any attempt at comparative analysis of lying would necessarily be a total waste of time.
But here, Richard Fernandez invites us to dip a toe in the waters of relative morality, a supremely sophisticated discipline in which lies could be measured on some more-or-less continuous malfeasance scale, so they would be amenable to comparative analysis. For instance, the word of the plain-vanilla honest man would always register at zero on such an adequate scale, and falsehoods of various degrees of malevolence would be recognized by numbers of proportional magnitude.
One could even conceive of a unit of measurement for this “rationalized dissemblance” (Copyrights, Guvinoff), which would not necessarily difficult to define, since the negative dollar might serve rather well, as follows: On that scale, the grand total of Bernie Madoff’s misrepresentations over his whole career would amount to 70 Giga units, because he ultimately caused $70,000,000,000 to be sunk into his private black hole of malicious gravity. Mathematically speaking, you might safely state that he would have conributed 70 billion of negative dollars to the common good, so the magnitude of his dissembling would be measured by the number 70,000,000,000, since the unit of malfeasance is the negative dollar.
This measurement would allow one to evaluate rationally the distance between honesty and politics (or other fields of dissembling), since well executed science requires rigourous respect for the facts (a.k.a. “honesty”) whereas well executed politics seems to require some virtuosity in the art of dissembling.
You could even visualize some kind of world championship where extraordinary athletes such Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and John Murtha, just to name three highly respected practitioners, may have a chance at the podium, and perhaps the competition should be held in Chicago, since Rio de Janeiro is already booked-up?
No wonder Sarah Palin is supposed to be a bumbling amateur!
My brother was fuming to me sometime ago about a buddy who somehow got a handicapped sticker and uses it to park in handicap spots. This guy is not handicapped or otherwise incapacitated (he is in fact a part time USPS employee who walks a lot when he is called to work).
One of the things that I find remarkable is deceit is often times not that hard. Especially now-a-days when we are able to stand others off from physical contact. It is easier to lie over the phone than in person, it is easier to lie by e-mail than over the phone, it is easier to lie over chat sessions & social networks than e-mail.
Yes, we all lie and honest people strive to minimize deceit whereas dishonest people use deceit to advance themselves or some other goal.
An ironic development is in the name of making things crystal clear & holding others accountable is making deceit easier. Deceit by obfuscating the truth and burying the truth in a huge pile of irrelevant chaff.
Why not measure misrepresentations in Guvinoffs instead of Giga Units?
Always best to give credit where credit is due.
See the American Thinker for scientific lies. . . The New Scientist? – http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/10/the_new_scientist.html
@Doug (67)
Thank you Doug, but wait a minute, I am not dead, yet, and I don’t feel ready to receive this kind of honor. On the other hand, I reckon that if a Guvinoff is equivalent to a Giga units, and these units are negative dollars, Inflation will increase the buying power of all the liers and tarnish my image at the same time, too bad!
wretchard, on the banks, everyone and their tapeworm knew that the feds were lying to the public – but the lie was that seven of the ten banks needed funds. Seven were just cover for Citi, which was sick unto death, and BofA, which was sick from having been forced to swallow Merrill. Whether the lie was well-advised or not, remains to be seen. I think it was, after all is said and done, mostly harmless.
On the black helmet, I have at least two black helmet friends, but for myself, I’m letting it go grey (like yourself, from the pic on this page) and buzzing the top instead of doing the comb-over. God bless Bruce Willis, but I’m not going that far.
#69 Professor Guvinoff
May we expect to see a hockey-stick graph of Giga units?
A “lie” is just one manifestation of the true evil, communication with the intent to manipulate the recipient of the information.
It has many forms. A bald-faced lie is just the extreme form of the dynamic. Editing the truth is another, such as saying that that ten studies have come to the conclusion of X, while omitting to mention that you also know of a thousand other reputable studies that came to the opposite conclusion, and twenty that questioned the methodology of the ten that came to conclusion X.
And then there is the taking on the robes of a false prophet, such as telling someone that something certainly shall come to pass when there is no way in Hell you have of guaranteeing or knowing that it will even though you say, or intimate, that you do.
And the motive behind it doesn’t really matter. Many people do evil things for noble and idealistic reasons. Its the mechanism. Its the means. Its the manipulation.
And when you start looking at other people as objects to manipulate, you have robbed them, and yourself, of the basic notion of humanity.
we reward the liar when we do what he wants us to do –so a sophisticated manipulator can lie by using the truth, knowing you’ll believe the opposite. later, when you realize you’ve been had, what are you gonna do, accuse the liar of having told you the truth? So, in that case, where was the lie?
i think the language fails us in this area –sort of what orwell was warning about, that we need the words in order to have the thoughts –and here we are at ‘truth and lies’ and have no way other than explanatory add-ons to talk about the diff between a truth like the ten commandmandments vs a truth like, i wish i had a sandwich.
Habu –Barry Goldwater’s son do you mean?
Thank You All for a little bit of sanity in this crazy Obamanation world.
I am currently re-reading James Clavells ‘WHIRLWIND’. It seems to tie in what’s going on in the USA and Iran. Any comments?
Wretchard, The new do is good to go. I said when I clicked on the bookmark and the club came up on screen, WHOA! Then I sort of chuckled at the connection. But don’t let the offers of senior discounts bother you. I get called Santa Claus all the time.
Habu, glad to see you… I was hoping you’d chew through the ropes!
I find the fact that Bill Ayres wrote Obama’s book ‘Dreams’ diagnostic of the whole truthfulness of B Obama and the main stream press that protects him.
To question Obama about this point is made racist,
uncivil,
passe’,
and just not done.
And yet the fact remains that Michael Obama recommended a ‘guy in the neighborhood’ (Bill Ayres) help Obama with his book and the book was written in Ayres style not Obama’s.
The book is the lynchpin of the Obama legend and yet no one wants to accept the consequences of terrorist bomber Bill Ayres being the author of Obama’s masterpiece.
There seems to be a tacit acceptance that if the old media refuses to see something it does not exist.
” There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures. “
Earlier I said this site was THE standard for the ‘Net.
Allow me to point out just one reason why. At the usually good American Thinker , writer Steve McCann is garnering kudos for his latest effort. However he lost me in the forth paragraph when he states,
“Of the world’s major democracies only the United States merges both functions into the office of President.”
For a political writer to say the United States is a democracy is hedious. We are a Republic. It was one of the great debates during the genesis of this nation’s development.
The differences between the two systems are great and significant. Mr. McCann would do well to spend some time reading the founding documents if he wants to remain credible in this arena. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution even MENTIONS the word democracy.
BC’ers know this stuff.
“Cain,where is Able?”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
We all have the mark of Cain on us. That’s why we were cast out, and we live in a fallen world. But,
“…Thou mayest triumph over sin…”
It’s a battle everyday to maintain your integrity. It’s a personal battle between your conscious mind and the assault of reality that says “give up!” “submit!”, “everybody does it!” and of course “hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us!” Because it’s all just crap at McDonald’s whether they hold the pickles and lettuce or not.
But seriously, since the serpent seduced Eve, since Man ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, since Cain slew Able, it’s always been Man’s Fate to lie, to fabricate the truth, to deceive.
I guess it hurts the most to see the nakedness and brazeness of the lies, and to see the corrosive rotteness of the falsehood and how it is tearing the Republic apart at the seams.
Who is worse? The perpetrators of the lie or the simple minded who want to believe the lie for their own selfish ends?
“Why not measure misrepresentations in Guvinoffs instead of Giga Units?” at the current rate of inflation and the length of said hockey stick still undetermined it might be better form to have the Guvinoff as a measure of dissemblance beyond giga.
At least something is showing a strong tendency toward growth today, don’t you think?
Habu, hang in there and enjoy what can be enjoyed fly fishing at dusk, skiing by day, fireplaces warming against the coming snow at night, oh and a beer or two when necessary. I suppose you’ve got the mandatory seven cords split by now and the callus are owned and paid for, on your hands as well as the callus on your seat. May you be required to retain only the callus on your seat.
I’ve been revisiting Shakespeare,
hoping for some muse of the bard to help with my lines.
But alas it is still just short of criminal,
and a case of poetic injustice if ever one were to be made
would find me guilty of a lack of meter and no sense of rhyme.
But i can appreciate Walt’s stanzas,
and it doesn’t sound so much like tin,
as the din that emanates from my key board.
Still I cannot write the difference I hear,
I can tell the difference between a wolf howling and the coyote’s longish yelps.
I only carry within me the vision of Bald Eagles paired and singly feeding on healthy Glacier
fed fish from Glacier fed streams.
While dawn’s light roused the morning bugs,
I’ve Stood in awe as Bison moms and bison children graze along the Madison.
And floated in silent wonder as gnats feed by sunset’s rays outlined Big horned sheep drinking deep, astride the Gates of the Mountains.
My heart yet soars with the thought of elk launching themselves high and gracefully over man made obstructions, which obstruct only man.
It is a hard and a beautiful land, and one that calls for rugged individuals to help each other when there is need,
And for not so rugged ones to leave
or perish with the weak of heart and spirit,
the foolish or the lame.
I have witnessed the magnifying effect of bright sunlight drawing mountains near enough you know you can reach out to touch with a hand
Breathing in the pine scent that fills the mountain sides and the sight of antelope speeding past corn fields and wheat away toward the Milk river.
A dash at distance above the Steamboat landings,
just short of what was once the great falls of the Missouri, where still my outstretched limbs never did meet the sky but found a fleeting contentment.
Habu, enjoy my Montana, I am certain there is room enough there for my memory and the knowledge that you will not get in the way of my recall, for you and I are made small by the vistas of the plains meeting badlands and shortsighted in the elevations of upward thrusting rock. The spine of the continent, the backbone of America.
I envy you.
“However many counterfeit dollars one has in the pocket, there must be an irreducible quantity of hard currency — truth — in one’s pocket or bankruptcy ensues.”
Does that not describe the Housing Bubble and its attendant absurdities?
And perhaps I have had a revelation.
Communists think that the fact that the money is counterfeit does not matter because it is what they say it is. The fact that there is no hard currency – no ability to produce goods and services – to back it up does not matter, because they can simply set the value by the fiat of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In fact, this is essential to their entire economic concept.
So, once you have accepted the ability to value something based on what you want it to be, is it not a short skip and a little hop to do that with all other facts? I have always assumed that counterfeiting the truth was a way for communists to avoid dealing with the consequences of their actions, but perhaps it is a natural consequence of their economic views.
#63, If you are going to talk like that wretch, you may as well include a Hieronymus Bosch (The Garden of Earthly Delights), and a Last Judgement or two (for visual support). Art like that used to try its level best to serve the cause of truth, but not anymore. Propaganda says might makes right, and the truth is whatever I say it is.
I wonder has lying really increased all that much or has it gotten harder to get away with. Congress critters were notorious for talking one way in their district/state then returning to Washington and voting/talking in another. They seldom got called because of the lag in communication, cover by MSM, and etc. Now with the alternate media there is, as has been noted, a persistence of the lie and video proof as well as printed words.
Deer Towed,
Our system has several problems built into the design:
(1) Our federal legislators are constitutionally protected from any action for ANYTHING they say in their debates or speeches in the halls of Congress.
(2) They are answerable only to the voters of their voting districts. Even if convicted of criminal offenses, they can be re-elected and serve, so long as the rest of Congress do not cast them out.
I haven’t heard of any cases, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there have been Congressional Representatives who were elected after felony convictions, who then served their terms from a cell.
Seems redundant these days.
W/81; –nice –a Charlie Russell painting, in words!
***
wretchard, please do something about that photo –yes i KNOW i’m a worthless net addict who ought to be out in the street fighting for the country –but you don’t have to look at me like that –I yam not an animal !
***
this thread brings up a paradox –once the system of trust has broken down (as it has in DC) the only people you can trust are the ones who say “you can’t trust me”. And whomever is that honest, well ya gotta believe him! which means, you can’t trust him.
Truth and lies?
I blame Luddy Barsen, he inspired this with his last comment. You can blame him, too.
Star Trek explains! Click my name, if you dare. Click it!
Habu, you are technically correct about our republic. Yet in this age in which nearly all think that universal adult suffrage is not only the correct policy, but unquestionably so, then the distinctions between a republic and a democracy narrow. In everyday speaking one might thus forgive this imprecision.
Who is worse? The perpetrators of the lie or the simple minded who want to believe the lie for their own selfish ends?
In functional terms, there is no difference. Their victims don’t care about such distinctions. If your wife is beaten, raped, and killed, philosophical categories and distinctions about the motives of the perpetrators become immaterial. People should be judged for their actions, and not for what we may perceive their motives to be. We really can’t peer into the minds of others, despite what our modern day shamans, people with degrees in the “social sciences,” say.
Marcus Aurelius,
it is easier to lie over chat sessions & social networks than e-mail
What are trying to do, make me doubt the 24 year old blonde with the hots for older sarcastic intellectuals I was chatting with the other day? This is a great country. You can sell anything once and most things twice.
BL 86
W/81; –nice –a Charlie Russell painting, in words
- Luddy that is a lie, though the intent was not evil, there was not even an outline, heck barely a description was given. Word play shouldn’t count as a verbal painting, just word play. Heck I don’t care. I view my lack of poetic ear as a source of humor. Makes y’all sound like Shelley– Berman or Winters take your pick. otherwise it would be Schecky, as in Schecky Greene. matters not.
But thanks anyway
@65 Professor Guvinoff:
“In the light of strict morality, a lie is a lie, so any attempt at comparative analysis of lying would necessarily be a total waste of time.”
Not necessarily, not at all. I think we can agree that the truth, however unpleasant or inconvenient, is always its own justification. Professor Bok, in her excellent book, calls this the principle of veracity. And we needn’t be sidetracked by the popular postmodern abdication of responsibility which holds that the “truth” of any given situation is often subjective and sometimes even impossible to pin down. That may be so, but whatever the ambiguities before us, we all know without a doubt whether or not we intend to deceive.
However there are times in real life when moral absolutism runs at cross purposes with other ethical and moral considerations. In fact, the effects of moral absolutism can amount to great cruelty and cause considerable harm. To take the classic example, would you lie to a murderer about the location of his intended victim, or tell him the truth, knowing that to do so would aid him in his crime and even cost another person his life? Is someone else’s safety a reasonable sacrifice for the sake of one’s own moral purity? One could argue (and I do) that any circumstance which justifies violent resistance would also justify deceit.
There are other, less extreme and yet consequently more vexing scenarios where absolutism of any kind is of little practical help. That is why Professor Bok’s examination of the various circumstances, both personal and professional, where the choice between truth and deception crops up as a matter of course, is well worth reading and by no means a waste of time. Because the fact is, politicians aside, there are many circumstances in which good people find themselves questioning whether or not telling the truth is the best course. And one of the characteristics of these situations is that in each case it would be easier to lie. Without a rigorous examination of those circumstances and their justifications, it becomes all to easy to simply take the line of least resistance.
The introduction to her book (‘Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life’) has the following epigraphs which lay out the choices she addresses:
“When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful” ~ St. Augustine ‘On Lying’
“Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?”
~ Francis Bacon ‘Of Truth”
“After prolonged research on myself, I brought out the fundamental duplicity of the human being. Then I realized that modesty helped me to shine, humility to conquer, and virtue to oppress” ~ Albert Camus ‘The Fall’
EN/87; wow –right next to the robot, there’s a short clip of FDR in 1933 having what they called a “fires i’d chat”. Anyhoo now i finally get it about FDR’s so called nude eel i always herd about. it’s like Hopen Change! Finely, a cognutive breakthru!
(wade, no no, i meant it–them CR tropes wuz all in there, eagles in the high sky, rocks and trees and streams and wide open spaces n stuff –even the coloration come thru a CR pallet)
Wretchard, you have now proved your intimate familiarity with the greatest parts of American culture. Folk songs, literature, history, religion, politics and now: classic American cinema. Really, it’s astounding.
Harry: What’s her last name? I’ll look it up.
Lloyd: You know, I don’t really recall. Starts with an S! Let’s see. Swim? Swammi? Slippy? Slappy? Swenson? Swanson?
Harry: Maybe it’s on the briefcase.
Lloyd: Oh, yeah! It’s right here.
Lloyd: Samsonite! I was way off! I knew it started with an S, though.
buckets, no kidding –how perfect was that clip from 2001 A Space Odyssey –HAL 9000 as the federal colossus –
Wretchard,
This latest image of you shows that you just became father of a teenager. It happens so quick. I’ve had four and my hair is almost, almost white now.
Ned
Marcus #66
I know what you mean about these “disability” stickers or license plates or whatever various states use.
I’ve been paying attention to them, and it’s astounding how many you see on vehicles here or anywhere else you travel.
And over the last 18-24 months, out of maybe near a hundred plus I’ve seen parking at malls, grocery stores, the multiple businesses I work at, and other places, there was one (1) elderly lady that was using a walker!
Lierally every other individual I saw exiting the vehicles seemed to have no problem at all walking briskly to the entrance of the businesses.
Just the other day, while leaving the grocery store, a late model black Mercedes Benz SUV (G series maybe? One of those good looking square ones) with a “disabled” license tag parked in the disabled parking spot, and then 5 (five) young people exited it, and began horsing around as they crossed the drive to enter the store.
I remarked to the driver, a maybe 17 year old black female, that she had parked in a disabled spot.
She replied that the SUV had a sticker, that it was ok to park there because of that.
I made the remark that apparently none of the passengers or driver were disabled, and it would be courteous if they wouldn’t park there when no disabled person was riding in or driving the vehicle.
Her reply was a beauty, and sounded like it was well rehearsed as well, “Well we’re all on Adderal or Ritalin and other drugs, and that makes us all disabled, and we all get paid for it too! So there, is that good enough?”
“I guess so” I replied, “and good luck with your therapy, um, therapies.”
It was then that one of the older (maybe 20) male passengers recognized me and stated “Hey, I know you, you’re my pharmacist, Dr XYZABCD at XYZ Pharmacy, thanks for getting my Medicaid fixed for both my Concerta prescriptions. My momma thinks you are really hot. Momma and her sister just love you. They call you all the time with questions about the prescriptions and they always say they always call you before the doctor. You are the MAN!”
Apparently these superlatives impressed the driver enough that she said “wait a minute everybody, I’m going to move the Mercedes, we really shouldn’t have parked there.” Then she looked at me and stated “Thanks for straightening us out on that, my aunt has had both legs amputated and I’d hope nobody would park needlessly in that spot when she needed it.”
Maybe there is more than a tiny fragment of hope.
HABU!
Glad to see that you are still with us. You have been sorely missed in these perilous times. Stockpile your recreation and good memories for the evil times to come; and also continue your preparations for the same. But as I said on another thread, the scent of 1775, 1859, and even 69 AD seems to be on the breeze. We definitely would not mind it if you could find time occasionally to add your undoubted experience and wisdom to our ponderings.
Subotai Bahadur
86. luddy barsen:
W/81; –nice –a Charlie Russell painting, in words!
……
agreed. but if habu doesn’t care to opine I wouldn’t mind him slapping some Yellowstone mountain skylines on these threads. It’d be easy enough to say “hey, here’s a wild river runs through it.” There be geysers here. oh and mercy the earth moves.
I have heard the word heaven on a starry night
on a starred night under stars in wyoming where the universe bays and the dark land hold dense audience.
Richard, No wonder your hair has turned grey–you’re way across the pacific. Recently the earth moved there abouts and far off Samoa got dunked by a tidal wave. I trust you have loved ones to look after your parts. Likely you eat right and get plenty of exercise. Oh, also its good to have friends
A Land Down Under – Men at Work
#79, Habu: This will bear you out-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFXuGIpsdE0
At 57 I am very bald and almost white. My wife complains that this makes her feel weird because she looks so much younger. She has pestered me to get transplants and to dye it. I have better ways to burn money, so now I shave it all. Does make me look younger.
I was reading neo-neocon the other day, and came across this: http://neoneocon.com/2009/10/03/the-willingness-to-believe-that-two-plus-two-makes-five/
“It ties directly into observations such as the following one by Hilton Kramer (he is referring to Stalinism, but he could just as well be talking about the most rabid adherents of any sort of Leftism):
It is in the nature of Stalinism for its adherents to make a certain kind of lying—and not only to others, but first of all to themselves—a fundamental part of their lives.
It is always a mistake to assume that Stalinists do not know the truth about the political reality they espouse. If they don’t know the truth (or all of it) one day, they know it the next, and it makes absolutely no difference to them politically For their loyalty is to something other than the truth. And no historical enormity is so great, no personal humiliation or betrayal so extreme, no crime so heinous that it cannot be assimilated into the ‘ideals’ that govern the true Stalinist mind which is impervious alike to documentary evidence and moral discrimination.””
To the Left the Lie is simply a tool. Believing that man is an infinitely malleable being that can be molded to fit any constructed reality, lies are used to create new anchors to new realities which then operate independently on the strength of their own internal logic from that point on. There are no consequences for this as ultimately the New Reality supersedes the old and the past is flushed down the memory hole. – or papered over with another lie.
So Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and the cast of All Star Liars can tell us with absolute conviction that all is well with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac while the whole kit and kaboodle circles the drain to arrive at a crashing point with dead-on predictable certainty.
Part of the exercise was to keep the gravy train rolling as long as possible. Part of the exercise was far more insidious. Such a pattern of organized deception from persons in positions of authority and responsibility is, IMO, designed to weaken the system by undermining the faith of society in the system itself. Crash the system then be the responsible person who picks up the pieces, and the power, now shorn of checks and balances.
PACat 60: But what really stuck with me was her observation in the opening chapter that a lie is basically a form of coercion. Like force majeure, a lie is a way to compel someone to do something — only it operates on the level of will rather than physical force. She goes on to argue that this is why lies are so destructive psychologically to their victims– a person who has been had typically feels humiliated, cheated, angry, and helplessly frustrated. A successful lie turns the victim’s will, trust, intelligence, and other good qualities against themselves in a way that physical violence does not.
This is exactly what was so demoralizing about the Communist system. It turned people against themselves. That is exactly what is being done to this country right now. We are being bombarded with lies. Every time a lie is exposed, the of “Racist!” sounds forth with the implied command: “Shut up!”
Which brings me to the consideration of the relationship between silence and the lie. On the one hand, silence in the presence of a lie implies consent. This is why evil always seeks to silence its victims and its witnesses. But there is another aspect of silence. Silence in the presence of something important going on is itself a lie. There is very much of that going around too.
52. M. Simon sez:
Funny, I thought the irony in the article was the picture. At least the part with a little tongue-in-cheek.
Looks like it took 52 comments before someone noticed. I noticed it right off…now W looks more like me, ‘cept I’ve still got a tad blonde in my white.
re w’s inclusion of John Edwards: the guy was one of three finalists for the party sure to win the election. He had lots of big time support. He could’ve been elected president –and THEN had the scandal break. What in the dickens is going on, i wonder. It’s like the gods up on Olympus are using us for a pinata party.
Anyone whose seen Wretchards videos knows the previous photo weren’t so recent. just check out the express bar if you need a refresher.
luddy barsen: The following ought to be read just like you were one of the gang, Our gang. Spanky or Alfalfa or even Darla, if you so choose.
“Stop it luddy, wait are you just being nice or…, are you telling the truth? Aw gee luddy, do ya really think so? Why thanks pal. and hey I’m sorry for, ya know calling you a lykra, just cause the thread line was, well, you know. Well, hey? Maybe you weren’t telling the truth. Maybe you were following the the thread line too? Why then you are a lire-er, luddy. Why you no good scoundrel son of Hoosier. Why I ought-a”.
man, can’t ya see where this leads, I’m soooo confused.
even 69 AD
Maybe 79 AD too.
well, this’ll help –there can’t be much confusion to these. A very small collection of 20 but they are reproduced well. Look at (#7 i think) “The Fireboat” –look what he did with distance –showing that steamboat that far away. And in the foreground across those smooth boulders that shadow pattern from a scrub bush with the very low sun behind.
but it’s just paint, it’s not what it looks like. so it’s a lie –except you volunteered for it so it’s a true experience. nah we couldn’t lie nowhere near as easily without the words to do it. Truth doesn’t need words it will be there regardless. if you’re walking thru the brush and get too near a Kildee’s nest, the momma will come running toward you with a broken wing dragging. when she’s sure you see her, she turns 90 degrees presenting you with a side view of the broken wing and keeps running. She thinks you’re a predator and she’s leading you away from her nest. her wing isn’t really broken –she’s lying to ya, and that’s the truth!
None of my business, Wretchard, but we talk about BHO’s lineage, and often our own, so what the hey:
Are you mostly pure Filipino?
Hardly ever see anyone with grey hair here.
Apropos of the black helmet and dictators:
1) Mussolini evidently shaved his head to look younger when his bald spot got too large to cover with what was left of his hair. Here is a link to two photos of Il Duce, before and after:
http://italophiles.com/italian_history6.htm
(scroll down about 1/4 of the way on the left-hand side)
2) Hitler seems never to have gone grey, at least not that I can tell. Two short German newsreels from the last few months of his life in early 1945:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sljQyVg_VuM
Did he color his hair, maybe? Or did he still have naturally dark hair at age 55/56?
And then there’s the speculation about Teh Won and Grecian Formula for Men:
http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/10/aww-another-date-night-for-obamas.html#links
(remarks about the O’s grey hair are in the Comments section)
On the other hand, when politicians no longer care to even bother lying to the public, what does that signal?
Here’s an example from last year.
It is worth hearing a few times to absorb the full sense of nascent tyranny.
That quote, repeated time and again, actually spurred a revolt. You may have heard about it.
But was only a single battle won? The sad thing is it is still not clear if that revolt will ultimately be successful. The fool who spoke what he believed to be true, unintentionally aiding the revolt and thus harming his supporters, is now confidently seeking higher office.
Thus, I call it “The Sound of Rulers”. Get used to it.
It is an article of faith among among Democrats now that there is nothing disqualifying about lying about mere sex. The fact that sexual deceit is a symptom of a deeper pathology, abuse of a position of authority, is completely ignored. In the cases of Clinton, Edwards and Letterman they take it as given that the underlaying act is private and acceptable. That allows them to ignore subsequent abuses, such as charges of assault and perjury in the case of Clinton, public fraud and abuse of a sick although ideologically complicit spouse in the case of Edwards, and gross public hypocrisy in all cases, especially with Letterman. This reaches an apotheosis when people excuse the sexual misconduct of Roman Polanski.
The new photo is 2009 Beirut.
try being a blond – or go bald
and sleep.
Berlusconi is quite a good exemple, no he doesn’t dye his hair, no he doesn’t have sex with call girls, no (even with minors), no he doesn’t lie to Italians, especially to those he promise new houses after earth quakes… no he doesn’t use his medias to make his own promotion, and, of course he doesn’t use viagra
Not an original observation, I’m sure, but the theme of “lying” reminds me how irredeemably Gnostic the Left is. Gnosticism, after all, is about exposing the “Big Lie” of Creation, i.e., the Creator of this material world is at best a fraud (and at worst a tyrant) who has imprisoned pure souls in the muck of the material world. To point this out, “to speak truth to Power” as the phrase goes, begins our own personal Assumption into the Godhead.
While there’s always been a strain of Gnosticism in American culture (Harold Bloom calls it “the American religion”) I think it reached its apotheosis in the “Bush Lied” meme of this past decade. That phrase, endlessly repeated, was a profession of faith that simultaneously delegitimized the ancien regime while elevating the believer into a new priesthood. To say that Bush was inarticulate in defending himself misses the point: his enemies had found a way to tap into a religous dynamic that was beyond rhetoric.
In short, the MSM finally established in mainstream culture the Nicene Creed of the New Left: that the lie so self-evident in Bush’s Iraq strategy was a hypostasis of the fundamental Lie of America’s creation. In doing so, they made Obama inevitible, for who could oppose the Lie except one whose essense was Truth? (Hillary, after all, would have been a much more logical choice if the “rules” of American politics had not been short-circuited.) Sarah Palin (rather than McCain) became the focus of hatred because her “gravitational lens” threatened to bring Simon Magus into focus.
Or to (finally!) bring the point back to the conversation, Edwards, Clinton, Letterman **can’t** lie, because it’s recognized that **they** recognize the Big Lie. Polanski and the Manson Family, after all, are coreligionists under the skin…as is, apparently, Bernadine Dohrn.
wretchard,
Meeting Christopher Hitchens did that to you?
Marie Claude,
he doesn’t use viagra
How do you know?
Our host was kind enough to post my definitive quote on American Exceptionalism on “The power of legend” thread, #175.
Pascal Fervor,
Good point. While it is terrible to be subjugated by a tyrant, the thought that they could have style and what the military calls command presence, like Lawrence Olivier’s Crassus in Kubrick’s Spartacus, would cushion the blow. The reality is that our oppressors are nasty little people who could never stand up for themselves without a posse of thugs or the force of the very law they make a travesty of behind them. Think of Obama, or Newsome, they are closer to Mankowitz’s choice of Roddy McDowell to play a weak and sick Octavian in Cloeopatra.
86. luddy barsen:
I keep searching in D.C. for the Cretan Liar, but so far all I’ve found have been cretin liars.
115. Sertorius:
“In short, the MSM finally established in mainstream culture the Nicene Creed of the New Left: that the lie so self-evident in Bush’s Iraq strategy was a hypostasis of the fundamental Lie of America’s creation.”
Dunno about that, It takes a great deal of hubris to ignore the Robb/Silberman report, To quote Judge Silberman “Bush lied, people died,” is “an absurd and outrageous libel.” Of course that hasn’t slowed the hubris, nor the hubrimeiniacks.
Self evident lies are evident no doubt only to those who would think to lie in such a spot, or are apt to believe and repeat such nonsense.
Watching Mein Kampf (documentary) now there were folks who could lie. Whoa, at 13:48 of part 3, foreshadowed by 17:40 of part one. And all of Hitlers legacy could have been forstalled were it not for ineffectual sanctions on Mussolini’s Italy, and non interference by Chamberlain in Czechoslovakia.
I am beginning to view president Obama as the Chamberlain of our age. Succumbing to a particular strain of lie and deceit, the ones told to ones self and reenforced by the stalwart group surrounding you.
@33: ‘Are you seriously openly advocating the establishment of a “ministry of truth”? ‘
No, I am not. I am not suggesting that government run newspapers. I am suggesting that we get a better gatekeeper for information that the government must keep. And for information that will help strangers interact.
‘Modes of transportation may change but human nature doesnt. That is what has allowed the constuitution to last as long as it has… it [the constitution] takes account of the unchanging chatracteristics in human nature.’
The constitution does not account for the speed that information flows. Do we really need a Federal Post Office?
Like Orwell, I believe that people that define perceived truth hold dangerous amounts of power. I propose a separate branch of government, directly answerable to the people, to help tell the truth.
Life,
because he is 72 years old, if doesn’t then is is the phenomen of this century, considering his exploits
#33 People selected for their competence and trustworthyness … but selected by whom? The people.
Are you seriously openly advocating the establishment of a “ministry of truth”? No. I am not suggesting we replace newspapers. I am suggesting a central repository of information about people. Who pays their bills? Who molests children? Who votes where? How did my representative vote? Who got that big government contract?
Modes of transportation may change but human nature doesnt. That is what has allowed the constuitution to last as long as it has… it [the constitution] takes account of the unchanging chatracteristics in human nature. Technology is more than about modes of transportation. We no longer need a horse and buggy Post Office; technology has left it behind. We do need a government that will obtain, retain, and release information for the good of the people, not to the partisan advantage of whichever administration.
c’mon man… leave off dreaming of tomorrow for just a minute and read a little history… or at least a little Orwell. I’ve read Orwell. And also some Einstein; “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
#105 PA Cat
Point noted. It may be that our new 79 AD will be measured in Kilotons. And we may have the two years racing in order to determine our fate.
Subotai Bahadur
(Sorry about the double response … call me a noob.)
#118 Wadeusaf “It takes a great deal of hubris to ignore the Robb/Silberman report”
Yes, absolutely…not to mention the second part of the Duelfer Report. That’s why I think the “Bushed Lied” meme represents the New Left finally finding the “entering wedge” they’ve been looking for, lo these many years. It’s a religious assertion that can’t be addressed within the framework of political rhetoric–the fact that it was so successfully injected into the national consciousness was the Black Swan that preceeded Obama.
I keep thinking of that throw-away line from Gibbon as he discusses the Five Good Emperors: “Such princes deserved the honour of restoring the republic had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom.”
Thanks All, now my hair is more gray……..too!
S/115; you ring true i think –there’s the evidence of the peculiar reaction –how tired we grow of it! –when one tries to (for your example of so many) remind a “Bush Lied” person about the hard facts of history. It’s an hysterical deafness; they really can’t hear you. Where is the difference with religious ecstasy? And Dohrn is a brilliant example –that her sneering barking tongue-talk over the still-warm ritually murdered boho fellow travelers is so completly ‘normed’ that she must be as a priestess and the the Manson victims as a chosen tribal blood sacrifice –in the backs (not the fronts!) of the minds of the afflicted.
R/117; –righto that’s what that was alright –the liar’s paradox or Cretan Paradox. i think the riddle is in the mind merge of word with meaning –we do it on auto (otherwise we’d have to translate everything in our heads before we could speak –as we do with second languages unless/until we become truly bilingual). so when we come to a particular arrangement of words (a word is like stonehenge, big letter rocks ) such as the liar’s paradox, we don’t readily see that it’s just the words seeming to make a paradox, the concept itself is impossible to ‘figure out’ because it just doesn’t exist. Like Tuesday can’t be Wednesday even tho you can easily say ‘tuesday is wednesday’.
& re your …searching in D.C. for the Cretan Liar –did you look in the Cretin Lair? it has a big dome, like a limestone ringling brothers tent –you should be able to find it –it sure has no trouble finding you !
A related concept is the idea of a corrupt electorate that knowingly chooses a corrupt politician in the believe that the thief will steal from others and give the booty to the voters. The result is districts that compete with each other to send the most corrupt pols to the government. As exhibit 1, consider most urban “minority” districts. With that thought in mind,
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=awMmbjgMk1NU
111. wretchard:
The new photo is 2009 Beirut.
I thought for a second there your hair stylist used a bomb of some sort on you…
Just kidding!
119. T ‘st: noob. snicker…
“I propose a separate branch of government, directly answerable to the people, to help tell the truth.”
I propose we re-institute the Constitution (as originally written). By which all branches of govt are directly answerable to the people. And hang ‘em if they don’t tell the truth, SO HELP THEM GOD.
127. G.B.:
I believe that in the original federation that competition between the states was the idea. And the Fed Govt was there to mediate between the parties and to provide communal services that could not be bourne by individual member states such as national defense and treating with other nations. Geo. Washington was well aware of the inability of the electorate to self regulate and was a major proponent of representative electing representatives so that there would be a winnowing of the chaff.
124. Sertorius
The throw away is given life by the power of the preceding lines…
If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.
The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive Emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the (two) Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws.
Such princes deserved the honour of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom.
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
As placed in “An anthology of modern English prose” on Gutenberg Project, the passage lies just ahead of the Julian the Apostate. Beyond that the DEATH AND CHARACTER OF MAHOMET appears. Now I place no significance in the positioning of texts, but I do like the sumnation of Mahomet’s character as relayed by Gibbon.
It strikes fairly, especially in the context of this thread. So a taste,
From enthusiasm to imposture the step is perilous and slippery ; the daemon of Socrates affords a memorable instance, how a wise man may deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience may slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud.
Charity may believe that the original motives of Mahomet were those of pure and genuine benevolence ; but a human missionary is incapable of cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who reject his claims, despise his arguments, and persecute his life ; he might forgive his personal adversaries, he may lawfully hate the enemies of God : the stern passions of pride and revenge were kindled in the bosom of Mahomet, and he sighed, like the prophet of Nineveh, for the destruction of the rebels whom he had condemned.” …,
…,If he retained any vestige of his native innocence, the sins of Mahomet may be allowed as an evidence of his sincerity. In the support of truth, the arts of fraud and fiction may be deemed less criminal; and he would have started at the foulness of the means, had he not been satisfied of the importance and justice of the end. Even in a conqueror or a priest, I can surprise a word or action of unaffected humanity ; and the decreei of Mahomet that, in the sale of captives, the mothers should never be separated from their children may
suspend or moderate the censure of the historian.
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
That is one heck of a parting shot, in our age, I think. Perhaps you could tell me better if Gibbon was demonstrating a dry British sensibility? I confess to not having read the man enough to know if this perspective of mine is at all congruent with his perspective of his own labor?
Twenty years labor, sent to print with no copy made and no corrections taken. Lawrence later took a similar gamble and lost quite a bit but not twenty years.
#129 Wadeusaf — I’m certainly no expert on Gibbon, but that’s a very subtle reading! I suppose every writer/historian works within that borderland between “self-illusion and voluntary fraud.”
At any rate, I’ve always been intrigued by how Muslims pop up in unexpected places in 18th C Britain. It’s hard to know how sincere Gibbon is in his appreciation of Islam, since he uses Mohammed as a club to whack Christianity, but certainly the elites of that era could exhibit a great affinity. When George I first took up the English throne, for instance, he brought with him Mehmet and Mustafa–former prisoners taken by him in the Turkish wars of the 1690′s–who became trusted servants who were the only ones that were allowed into “the royal bedchamber” with all the political ramifications that entailed.
Then there’s the story of Job ben Solomon–a Muslim Gambian “wrongfully” shipped to Maryland as a slave. When made aware that a man of “noble birth” had been so treated, gentlemen on both sides of the Atlantic moved heaven and earth to see that he was repatriated and restored to his rightful place. (If you’re interested in American history, it was James Oglethorpe and his crowd who took the lead and footed the bill.)
The jingoism that the post-colonialist insist is narrative of the West is–if not a strawman–at least not all of the story.
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