Paul Krugman On Truthiness?

Today, 8/16/13, in The New York Times, Paul Krugman’s column was titled, “A Moment Of Truthiness.”  The title not only was a tribute to Stephen Colbert for fabricating the word “truthiness” in the first place, but basically Krugman deals with the calamitous fact that an adherence to the truth is no longer a requirement for the radical right.  If it sounds truthful that is enough.  Krugman cites the instance where PolitFact even called one of Eric Cantor’s grossly wrong statements about the federal deficit growing when it is actually declining, a “half-truth”.  The place where we are supposed to go to check political facts is itself inaccurate!! 

It was Josef Goebbels, propagandist par excellence, who stated, and I paraphrase, that one must repeat a lie over and over and soon the people will begin to believe it.  And also, the lie must be kept simple, and I add, said with great authority. 

Thus, we have all of the lies being told about The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.  The IRS will not be deciding what care may be dispensed under this law; there is the outrageous lie being told that if a business is required to provide birth control that is tantamount to violating the business’ religious liberty.  There is nothing said about denying the employee his or her right to birth control according to their religious beliefs. 

There are the tremendous lies being told about employee pension benefits bankrupting local governments.  What is never mentioned is that not one of the benefits could have been provided had not the governing body of that state, city or county approved of them.  In my own experience, it was the attitude that money would always be available to fund these benefits.  Try as I might, I could not convince some of my confreres that the economy goes up, and the economy goes down.  While it is up, one must be very careful not to commit to more than one could fund when the economy goes down.  Now it is the fault of the public employee unions, the teacher unions, etc.  No…it is the fault of people in office who want to be the big “sugar daddies” (or mommies) who give everyone what they want.  But it sounds truthful to say it is the unions, and so it is repeated over and over with the actual intent of doing away with public employee and teacher unions. 

From the radical religious right we hear a lot about “family values”, but we hear very little about the “You Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Your Neighbor”.   But, as the joke goes, “Everyone knows reality has a liberal bias”, so since reality is liberal, it is OK to say whatever one wants about Democrats or other Progressives.  The only rule is say it multiple times, keep it simple and say it with great authority.

I’ve often wondered if Stephen Colbert knew what truthfulness he told when he fabricated “truthiness”.