Good Lies and Bad Lies
For no rational reason, today my mind drifted to the subject of what I will call “official lyingâ€.
Recall that, in 2005, Lewis “Scooter†Libby, then adviser to VP Cheney, was charged and subsequently convicted for, in essence, lying to the FBI in its investigation into the Valerie Plame circus. While Libby’s prison sentence was later commuted by President Bush, he still has this conviction on his record.
Now I don’t want to trivialize Mr. Libby’s “crime†because it involved making public the information that a person was a CIA employee, even though most of the known universe already knew she was a CIA employee. The ensuing damage was that several pompous asses were publicly embarrassed and the media were awarded with a circus sideshow that they were able to milk for several months.
The obvious conclusion we can make from all this is that it is a major no-no to mislead our FBI. Ergo, official lying must be a bad thing.
Or is it?
What if, instead of lying to the FBI, one were to lie to the American people… to those who fund and supposedly direct the actions of the U.S. Government?
Well, apparently that is not really a bad thing. Consider, for one of many possible examples, the lying that went into the design and ultimate passage into law of Obamacare. The lying here was so egregious as to be almost incomprehensible, and the damage done to the Republic potentially terminal. And, it involved more than a mere adviser. Indeed, the guilty included the president, the vice president, the leaders of both houses of congress, the lame-stream media and staffers and butt kissers too numerous to identify.
Yet, none of the known liars in this case were charged with any breach of law. In fact, the worst that is likely to happen to any of them is being sent to a cushy retirement or a lucrative career as a lobbyist, or perhaps as authors of books where they brag about how they put one (or two, or many) over on us.
Why do we put up with such treatment from people who are actually our employees? From people who take and take and take while producing NOTHING of value? How did we become that stupid as a nation?
The recent shooting of congressperson Gabrielle Giffords (and others) rightly shocked the nation. Yet, looked at from another perspective, I am truly amazed how few members of government are shot! Given their collective behavior, one might realistically expect it to be a regular thing.
How and why did we let it come to this? Yes, life in the USA is still pretty good, certainly better than a lot of the world. Yet, I have this eerie feeling that most of us are now whistling past the graveyard (so to speak), that we know the party cannot continue.
Perhaps it is a requirement of our long-term existence that, every so many generations, there is a mass thinning of the human herd? We desperately hope there is something rational about all this, even though we know better.
Meanwhile, I mostly piddle in my garden while waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Troy L Robinson