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Windriven's avatar

Politicians lie to us because we want to be lied to, demand to be lied to. Truth is a bitch. Illusion (not to say delusion) is often a much more comfortable wear.

Truth requires objective evidence. Everything else is merely belief no matter how intensely we might believe it.

In many cultures we are taught from an early age to embrace belief, to accept it as equally valid as fact. Various gods for instance, may or may not exist. Objective evidence is not to be found. And yet many of us are taught to embrace the family gods(s), virtually from the cradle. The problem is that once we blur the line between evidence and belief on one matter it becomes very much easier to blur it on any number of others, so long as the belief is for whatever reason attractive to us.

To quote the prophet Simon the Short:

"I have squandered my resistance

For a pocketful of mumbles

Such are promises

All lies and jest

Still a man hears what he wants to hear

And disregards the rest"

And so we find ourselves where are today. We vote for those who tell us what we want to hear, not for those who speak the truth. Just ask Liz Cheney.

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Dee Dee Chumley's avatar

Loved this piece almost as much as your posts on bluebirds. It connected with me on many levels, but for the sake of brevity, I'll respond with only one. When I taught high school English, I was passionate about two areas of the curriculum: grammar (yes, I was one of those English teachers) and the unit I taught on Animal Farm. I think I found that little book fascinating because it taught me so much about the nature of politics and the power of language and how it can be abused. I tried very hard to communicate these ideas to my students, not always with success. Once on a test, I asked the question: What is one major theme of Animal Farm? In spite of all the time and effort I'd put into that unit, a student, who showed greater aptitude for sports than English, wrote: To show us that animals have feelings, too. I fear my response on his paper was not one of my finer teaching moments.

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