Gummint Lying

Gummint Lying

Being around liars, doing business with them or having them impose their lies on you in any way is one of the most annoying things in the world. I was an IRS tax collector and manager. Lies were the coin of the realm.

To lie is, "to speak falsely or utter untruth knowingly, as with intent to deceive. Synonyms: prevaricate, fib."

-- (Thank you, Dictionary.com.)

We all lie a little, usually to make us look better than we are or to cover up something someone did or didn't do. There is little effect to most lies. They occur and disappear without anyone caring or knowing.

We know we're not supposed to lie but do we know why? Why did lying get such a bad rap? 

There are useful lies, aren't there? We delude ourselves so. National leaders lie to further their own aims, often cloaking their lies with "for the good of the state." Nations have been built on lies.

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."
--Vladimir Lenin, setting the stage for Joseph Goebbels

"In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State." -- Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, setting the stage for politicians everywhere

 

In the USSR, everything the people heard from the state was a lie. In 1941, their government couldn't even admit the Germans had invaded until several weeks after the fact.  Didn't help the millions who had already perished though, or the millions more who would. 

I've read almost everything that Solzhenitsyn published.  He told the truth about the Soviet Union and he accepted the God-awful Gulag consequences. 

Fast forward to today. Zimbabwe (of our Z-Bux fame) has been transformed from an emerging and prosperous export economy to a failed state, based entirely on Joseph Mugabe's lies about native entitlements and forced redistribution of land, and his own nation-wide theft.

When did we start accepting lies as the normal state of government? Until LBJ, perhaps, lies were the exception rather than the rule. We resented them. LBJ was a Texas-sized liar and braggart of the first order. He sent me to war with a lie. He killed my friends with the same lie. But, no, there were thousands of lying politicians before him.

Today, Dec 13, 2022, gummint lying has become almost acceptable, expected even. We have no border crisis. We have no inflation. Our exit from Afghanistan was honorable. Lenin and Goebbels would have recognized all this.

COVID is a thing of the past, says the president, but mask mandates are again on the way. "Obedience masks" Tucker Carlson called them. But who am I obeying? Fed and state gummints? Why?

I've had COVID, thus I have some sort of natural immunity for a while. Don't know how long, sure, or how much, but SOME immunity. I've been vaxxed twice, boosted three times and I'm STILL in a vulnerable category, being old and all. There isn't any proof that the vaccines work but we still get them.