Henry A. Giroux, who holds a Chair at McMaster University in Canada, has written a profound article called "The Politics of Lying and the Culture of Deceit in Obama's America: The Rule of Damaged Politics". I believe that whatever your political persuasion here at DailyKos--whether you are a progressive, a centrist, or a right-leaning Democrat--this essay is indispensable reading because of its insights. It is not long, but densely written in an academic style and includes footnotes to sources like Hannah Arendt. Giroux's essay opens with:
In the current American political landscape, truth is not merely misrepresented or falsified; it is overtly mocked. As is well known, the Bush administration repeatedly lied to the American public, furthering a legacy of government mistrust while carrying the practice of distortion to new and almost unimaginable heights.
SOURCE: http://www.truthout.org/...
The author then gives leading examples of the lies the Bush administration told: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Iraq was working with Al-Qaeda, and the United States does (and did not) engage in torture. I think Giroux makes the mistake of saying that the Bush administration was unique in this sense (after all, Eisenhower lied to the nation on national TV about Gary Powers; Kennedy and Johnson told a series of lies about Vietnam; Nixon was a master of deceit; Reagan surely knew his "trickle down policy" never worked and was just a way of getting tax and policy breaks for the rich; and Clinton lied about his sexual relations to a national television audience). Perhaps Giroux errors by focusing on the lies and deceit and not on the reaction to the lies and deceit. I think that, and not the lying itself (for lying has always been part of power and politics) is what is different today. Whether jaded, indifferent, or simply stupid, the public today is far more accepting of lies than it was in the past. Recall that George Herbert Walker Bush's lie on "read my lips" when talking about taxes probably cost him reelection not so long ago. Since that time, less than two decades ago, the public has not risen up to rebel against those who feed it worse than tripe. Perhaps that, and not the lying, is at the heart of the problem.
But it was the case, getting back to Giroux's analysis, that the Bush administration carried their mission of deceit to a different level from the past. As Giroux writes:
"...when the government wasn't lying to promote dangerous policies, it willfully produced and circulated fake news reports in order to provide the illusion that the lies and the policies that flowed from them were supported by selective members of the media and the larger public. The Bush deceits and lies were almost never challenged by right-wing media "patriots," who were too busy denouncing as un-American anyone who questioned Bush's official stream of deception and deceit. Ironically, some of these pundits were actually on the government payroll for spreading the intellectual equivalent of junk food. And some of them were actually being paid by the Bush government to make such claims."
Same source.
Giroux then goes beyond just the Bush administration to show that this problem of lying and deceit has become endemic in American, corporate society. Importantly, he links this concept with the monopoly consolidation of the press and the media: fewer and fewer outlets are controlled by the same people and corporations. "Knowledge is increasingly controlled by a handful of corporations and public relations firms and is systemically cleansed of any complexity. Lying and deceitfulness are all too often viewed as just another acceptable tactic... ." Lying and deception in the mass media have become commonplace, he argues. This comes at an especially critical time when education, as he rightly believes, has become more worker training than anything else. So we are ending up with a public that is not trained to think critically; our citizens are more like the mobs in Rome which could easily be inflamed and which could be appeased with bread and circuses.
When lying and deceit become normalized in a culture, they not only serve as an index of how low we have fallen as a literate society, but also demonstrate the degree to which language and education have become corrupted, tied to corporate and political power and sabotaged by rigid ideologies as part of a growing authoritarianism that uses the educational force of the culture, the means of communication and the sites in which information circulate to mobilize ignorance among a misinformed citizenry, all the while supporting reactionary policies. Especially since the horrible events of 9/11, Americans have been encouraged to identify with a militaristic way of life, to suspend their ability to read the word and world critically, to treat corporate and government power in almost religious terms and to view a culture of questioning as something alien and poisonous to American society. Shared fears rather than shared responsibilities now mobilize angry mobs and gun-toting imbeciles, who are praised as "real" Americans.
Giroux is critical of Bush whose "double speak" initiated policies to allow loggers to clear protected forests under the "Healthy Forest Initiative" and corporations to pollute the environment under the "Clear Skies Initiative." Giroux missed, though, perhaps the most outrageous of these "double speak" Bush policies: naming a bill that allowed the government to wiretap and use formerly illegal methods of surveillance against its own citizens under "The Patriot Act". He might also have pointed to Bush's use and corruption of Colin Powell as a salesman for the invasion of Iraq; especially with Powell's charts, diagrams and photos in a performance of duplicity at the United Nations. Perhaps with Powell's U.N. performance, the Bush Administration reached its apogee of deceit: possibly even Powell was deceived into believing the distortions he ultimately proclaimed to the world as truth. In short, the deceivers even manipulated and deceived some of their highest figures. Only history will tell on this point.
Although Giroux spends much time on Bush and his policies, he really singles out Dick Cheney who, he notes, used language to suggest that torture was merely "enhanced interrogation" and thus neither illegal or reprehensible. He notes that Cheney even went on the Larry King show in 2005 to claim that detainees were being "well-treated, treated humanely and decently." Cheney neglected to mention that water-boarding seems to constitute part of his hospitality. He lied to the nation with impunity about the treatment of detainees at Bagram, Gitmo and elsewhere. He lied to the world about a "few rotten apples" after the horrible torture photos came out.
Nor is President Obama spared analysis by Giroux:
President Obama also indulges in this kind of semantic dishonesty when he substitutes "prolonged detention" for the much maligned "preventive detention" policies he inherited from the Bush-Cheney regime. While Obama is not Bush, the use of this type of duplicitous language calls to mind the Orwellian nightmare in which "war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. ...the idealism that shaped his language began to look like just another falsehood when measured against his continuation of a number of Bush-like policies. In this case, the politics of distortions and misrepresentations that Obama's lack of integrity has produced may prove to be even more dangerous than what we got under Bush because it wraps itself in a moralism that seems uplifting and hopeful while it supports policies that reward the rich, reduce schools to testing centers and continue to waste lives and money on wars that should have ended when Obama assumed his presidency. Obama claims he is for peace, and yet the United States is the largest arms dealer in the world. He claims he wants to reduce the deficit, but spends billions on the defense industry and wars abroad. He says he wants everyone to have access to decent health care, but makes backroom deals with powerful pharmaceutical companies. Orwell's ghost haunts this new president and the country at large."
If anything, Giroux treats Obama rather lightly and in an abstract fashion. He could have pointed to concrete examples like this whopper out of Obama's mouth: all health care meetings in my administration will be held in public and televised live on C-SPAN. Or Obama's policy reversals on FISA, on renegotiating NAFTA, on DOMA, on DADT, on not hiring lobbyists in his administration, on quickly closely down GITMO, on doing away with tax breaks for those making more than $250,000 per year and so on. Indeed, Hannah Arendt's dictum (that begins Giroux's essay) could perhaps best be laid at the foot of Obama:
Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.
Hannah Arendt
Didn't our new President realize that when he was a candidate and made sweeping promises on bringing about change, about bringing fresh faces to Washington, D.C., because to bring change you cannot have "the same old people"? Was that not a kind of cynical manipulation and deceit too especially since in this case the deceiver knew the nation yearned for change? I have been dismayed, to tell you the truth, at how so many here (even on this astute political website) have been not only willing but have been complicit with politicians who lie. Many people who write comments here simply ignore such deceipt as "normal practices". Some here even seem to revel in it: lying and deceit are just part of a game they seem to enjoy playing (at the expense of other peoples' lives and ideals, I might add). It's o.k. if "our" guy does it because it's for a "good cause". Only "fools" would believe what to them are "obvious falsehoods". Nonsense. Politicians of all stripes who lie and use duplicity should and must be called out for their actions, because essentially it undermines a democratic society. Inaction too, non enforcement of laws (on issues such as the illegal use of torture) enables those who have lied and deceived the public to continue to lie and deceive. "Looking forward not backward" is really a complete state of denial: it gives license to those who have lied, deceived, and torn up our constitution. It is the ultimate "Get out of Jail Free Card" for those who have lied, manipulated, deceived and misled the public and also broken the nation's laws. I'm sure Bernie Madoff and other crooks would be delighted to utilize the "look forward and not backwards" doctrine of Obama.
Giroux's essay is extremely thought-provoking and should be read in its entirety. It raises important questions (and provides a critical framework for understanding how the public is being manipulated on a daily basis). I recommend it to you, and if you have enjoyed this diary, I would appreciate your recommendations and comments below.