To Be Human Is To Lie

Let me state up front here what I am  talking about when I talk about lying. I believe to lie  is to be human. I'm not talking about being political. In the case of the latter, I think the case has already been made by far more clever and intellectual thinkers than I. Given the prospect of the next ballot, politicians look no further. They lie because their purpose is to be reelected and getting voted in means accommodating the majority. The cleverest thing successful politicians do is hold a wet thumb to the prevailing winds. I'm not talking about them. I don't feel them worth it.

I'm more concerned with us--the overpopulated population where every person is narcissitic enough to beleive their casual inattention to politics entitles them to an equal vote in its administration, These are the people who hear the slogans, the appeals to prejudice, and the attempts to convince them of their (vastly overblown) superiority. These are the ignorant who flaunt their lack of knowledge as a virtue and claim that obvious disparities in education and understanding are mere intellectual prejudice. Unfortunately, these people, lulled into compacency by the rhetoric of those in power, are the least likley to accept the need for humility. My own bias, which I freely admit, is against these people, many of whom thunp the bible as the answer to all things and --worse, much worse-- preserve their own importance by trying to force others to follow the prescriptive paths they themselves do not follow.

These are the people who, when caught out (as in indiscretions with multiple women), delight in providing a moral twist to their selfish agendas.  "I'm only human," they usually bleat, begging for the understanding and forgiveness they deny to others. Their hypocrisy plays as dismally on the national scene. Please, they say, let's not end billions in public subsidies to the oil companies, they're looking for oil for us, they're keeping the prices down at the fuel pumps, they are serving us all.  Except, they fail to talk about the corporate self interest: the millions in corporate bonuses that might be threatened by a decrease in public support and the potential drop in the stock value, not to mention the commensurate decrease in fund flowing to the politicians tasked with maintaining all of the above. If they're not directly benefiting from corporate lobbying, they are enthralled with an idea of--you name it--some drummed up idea of America's past,  over which they can't or won't exercise the skepticism that is as part of America as apple pie.

I lament the loss of native cynicsim regarding human behavior, greed, and complete selfishness that has marked most of the history of this country. The Founding Fathers got it. Go read Tom Payne on the abuses of power and see how carefully Jefferson and Hamilton balanced competing interests. Give me a break, I want to yell at these people (and maybe some of you say I already do). Instead of looking at these so-called ideals (which never existed), do a group examination of people's motives. See all the rhetoric and see all the backpedaling. We are a bunch of people who lie for our own advantage. Hell, we're not even the only species who does it. We learned at one of my university conferences that even apes will lie to get out of trouble.

Now let me address a miconception here. Some of you may say I am a Democrat because I have opposed so much of the Republical agenda. I did so because it is illogical, uneducated, and stupid. But that does NOT mean I am a Democrat. I am a common-senser. It's just that the Republicans have given me so much more to write about. For example, the world will not end on May 21. Take it from here. Those who spent their savings in anticipation of the world ending are not wise--just broke. The self-deluded Rapturists will still be among us on the 22nd, annoying those of us who see beyond their millennial delusions, paricularly when they try to reset the date by arguing their calculations must have been incorrect.

I have news for rapturists. No one could be so lucky to have things end like that--tied up in a bow by some deity stepping out of the sky. Not a chance. chums.

No, it's just business as usual down here on earth. We will still be the same grubby, selfish little creatures we always have been, trying to put up with the craziness of those who believe they have the answers when most of the rest of us are still trying to find the questions.