Largely in the last year, as it seems to me, lying has attained a whole new status in the human agenda. Or perhaps I'm just making it up that the presidential race was so full of misdirection and self-absorbtion and downright lying that no one cares much if you know they're lying to you ... the liars know you are unlikely to check the data. That used to be the job of the news program ... finding out what is true -- imagine that!
I guess the vaporous thinking comes on the heels of late-night satirist John Oliver, who recently shaped some pseudo-advertising aimed at informing and spoofing the vast ignorance (and hence dangerousness) of the current U.S. president. The ads [starting around minute 21] are several days old but the segue of comedy/satire into a direct assault that news programs or other outlets can no longer provide ... it has an exhausting quality. Somehow I wish it didn't work as well as I think it does.
Pushing back against a wall of advancing opinion that passes for news is impossible. Righteousness is conflated with what is right. Et Voila ... the world is flat once more and I for one am out of personal steam except to the extent that -- as usual -- so many who are so ignorant will have to be hurt if not killed.
If all this sounds muddled and unfocused, it's because I am, in large part, muddled and unfocused and wish I weren't.
Yes, it's the good ole days when I was stupid enough to believe ... and to share that belief with some of my fellow Americans...
Now decency is strictly a personal matter and money ... well, I won't lie to you.
For a long time, I have felt that the round-table football analysts who talk between segments of the game could move to Hawaii and not be missed. Maybe the same is true for so-called news broadcasts.
I am tired of being lied to by people who cannot seem to do their jobs and distinguish lies from truth ... or at least make a stab at it without lying down, spreading their legs, and joining the feeding frenzy.
I've always marvelled that lying isn't illegal unless you've sworn on a bible before a judge or senate committee. And if the senate committee doesn't want to hear the truth they won't swear you in. It's pretty blatant. I suppose nobody believes in the bible, or maybe think god will forgive them or just not notice.
ReplyDeleteThe truth is touted but not honored, and while everyone tells their kids that lying is bad, that bit of ethical certainty falls away with puberty and nobody really expects to see it again. I wonder if other apes are capable of lying, or does it require the ability to think abstractly and use language.
Clearly though, truth and justice are abstracts that don't exist outside of our fancies. And though admired outwardly, these notions are too much of a hindrance to our own interest to rise up to the standards we smugly insist represent our character. But now that our kids are being raised by the TV and the internet, maybe we'll let go of the fantasy and accept that we're corrupted in essence. I wonder if that would change anything. We seem impervious to shame.