On December 15, 2009, MinistryOfTruth published powerfully on Senator Al Franken's (D-Minnesota) outing of Senator John Thune (regrettably and shamefully R-South Dakota) for disrespecting the facts about the health care bill, when Thune used the Senate floor to falsely claimed that no benefits would kick in until 2014. The republican use of mendacity as a rhetorical strategy does not belong on the floors of the Senate and House. They are turning real legislation into "show-legislation." I've posted the video again, for all those like me who just can't get enough of it :-)
The sort of consistently deliberate misinformation (euphemism for mendacity) by republicans that Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) here brilliantly outs should never be accepted by our leaders, citizens, the mainstream media, or even the RNC as acceptable politics, but it is, regrettably. We've been onto this republican tactic of using mendacity as a rhetorical strategy to win arguments for some time now, with the DNC website countering each new or repeated republican lie about health care reform with a facts check, for example. In fact, Franken is too gracious here when he acknowledges the possibility that Thune may simply and innocently not have read the bill before railing against it on the senate floor. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) nails it when at 4:28 into the video he conjectures that "perhaps if you're going to vote against it you don't need to read it."
Not reading the bill is just another way of lying about it, of disrespecting the facts, and it's perhaps also a way that allows the mendacious republicans to claim ignorance when outed rather than being exposed for purposefully flouting the facts. When the facts are against you, you have to disregard them, or you will lose the argument, so what's the purpose of reading the bill? The only reason to read the thing would be to engage in a facts-based dialogue about it that could improve the bill or lead to a valid rejection of it by a majority of members. Republicans like John Thune are turning real discourse on the floors of the Senate and House into "show-discourse," as in a show trial, where the verdict is a foregone conclusion before the trial even begins. Republicans, armed with their ideologically twisted foregone conclusions about the bill and a complete disinterest in and fear of the facts, are en masse, as a unified block, subverting the legislative process of our government, simply in order to look like they are fighting the good fight for their "constituents," meaning the teabagging wingnuts suffering from false consciousness, corporations, and special interest groups who keep them in power.