Mendacity Perfected

Mendacity Perfected

So many people have written so eloquently about the Republican National Convention that I actually hesitate to follow.  But, I will.

There has been outrage over all of the lying that went on, and rightly so.  Paragraphs have been written about the weird Clint Eastwood segment last night.  I have been slightly offended that some people have said it is because he’s 82, so cut him some slack.  It seems to me that it is imperative that an actor who memorizes scripts, then portrays his or her character as perfectly as Eastwood has done, should not be allowed out on a stage before thousands of people to ad lib.  Sure, he was the mayor of Carmel in California, but the entire city of Carmel could probably be put inside that convention hall, so the bare-faced audiences he has faced in his life have been much smaller.  I fault the planner of the convention for not giving him a script to follow.  And Eastwood for not demanding one. 

Much has been written about all of the lies Paul Ryan told during his speech.  Willie Brown, former CA Assemblyman and former mayor of San Francisco, and consummate politician was on Chris Matthews today.  The subject of Ryan’s lies came up, of course.  Willie Brown’s comments, and I have to paraphrase, were right on.  He said when any politician is caught deliberately lying it lets people know this person is not trustworthy.  And the stench of that untrustworthiness follows that politician forever.  Although I was an elected official in a small rural California county, I know that some people will get up in front of people and lie.  But there seems to be a certain degree of shamelessness between lying to not too many people, counted in the hundreds, and lying to hundreds of thousands of people.  And in front of your own mother, wife and children to boot!  Ryan also makes much of his Catholic faith.  And yet he also says that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is the one he follows.  For Ryan, my question is, “Whatever happened to Jesus?”

Enough of lyin’ Ryan.  Let’s move on to Mitt and his speech.  As I listened to him speak I had the most peculiar feeling of déjà vu.  It was about the junior high school I never attended.  In my opinion, the speech was vapid, with jabs at the science of climate change on the level of the class clown (which I understand he was), with many less than truthful jabs at President Obama, and a conclusion to his speech that was immature almost in the extreme.  To base the conclusion of a speech for the Presidency of the United States on the premise that “…the future is before us; it is our destiny…”  Where the hell else does he think the future is??

As we enter this high gear election season we must all be very careful about what we hear and see on TV.  Although many people will excoriate some of us for making this comparison, it was the propagandist for the German Third Reich that perfected the telling of a big lie over, and over, and over, until in the minds of the listeners, it became the truth.  If we catch our candidates in constantly telling lies, not the occasional blooper, after the candidate has been shown what the truth actually is, then let’s follow Willie Brown’s statement, and let the stench of that untrustworthiness drive us away from that candidate.