The Last of the "Freedom" Myths

I trust, what with the recent logomachy having to do with both the new Supreme Court appointment and that which is to yet to come, we have just about knocked down, trampled, and stomped into paste any remaining vestige of respect the world might have held for one of our most treasured myths, that of a fair and impartial judiciary.

A “logomachy,” incidentally, is defined by Webster’s as “contention over verbal points, or one that is all words and no sense.” If anyone can find a more apt description of our purported congressional hearings, he is a wordsmith better than I.

But the fact that antagonists here fulminate and rail so heatedly and at such length gives it all away. Each, you see, knows full well that the justices’ biases will decide matters near and dear to their equally biased hearts, and each wants to assure that his bias is the one that will be imposed on the rest. “Fair and impartial,” indeed.

I once wrote in high school (young, foolish, and apt to blurt out the truth, you know) that a democracy or republic’s life was dependent upon its ability to do justice. “Democracy never lasts long,” I quoted John Adams. Adams apparently meant that the power to vote inherent in democracy meant the power to legally steal from one’s fellow citizens - “It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.”.

But to me democracies failed because people lie. To claim entitlement to the property earned by another required the willingness to tell the falsehood, to lie. And the willingness to lie, to live in a false reality, would inevitably lead to unwillingness and inability to do justice, the very spirit and lifeblood, the raisson d’etre, of democracy. Unable to do substantial justice, I argued, any such government would sooner or later incite – force rebellion. It was already clear to a high school kid in 1952 that the United States was a society absolutely dedicated to the lie, and when John Kennedy, a president, said a few years later that, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” I was certain I was right. For all his faults (and I would soon know a great deal about that, by the way), I thought John Kennedy was a great man.

In the end, I reasoned, only lies could make “peaceful revolution impossible. “ And, my friends, the United States of America is on the stage of history, the biggest, the most prolific father of lies there has ever been.

It won’t do to attempt denial. The truth is everywhere. Each day, the television set delivers a relentless blizzard of the particular lie called advertising, hour upon hour of carefully calculated falsehood. A portion of the society as large as sixty-five percent is grossly – that’s as obviously as a three hundred pound, five foot, five inch woman can be – overweight. Nevertheless, disgustingly obese nation tells - and convinces – itself, “It’s my glands.”

The shear volume of mendacity in the United States is astonishing. An "American" will lie about anything in which he has an interest. In the legal system, the lie is so dominant a tactic that even the liability insurance everyone must now have to protect themselves against the lie that constitutes more than seventy percent of all civil suits stipulates that coverage is denied the insured who refuses to lie about his part in any event that may result in lawsuit. The law having to do with political campaigns, in fact, protects lying politicians from lawsuit resulted from relying upon their lying and deliberately deceptive promises.

That percentage, incidentally, is the number based on my own research a number of years ago, research corroborated by the admissions of erstwhile claimants years after having been awarded huge settlements or jury awards. Each of the seventy percent admitted lying about injuries or damages in order to “get my money.” Many, more than half, of these people considered what they had done acceptable. The statement “everybody does it,” was repeated again and again. The rationalization having to do with the assertion that “insurance companies have all the money in the world” (that in the words of one woman) was implied – or stated openly – again and again.

Neither did any of the people come by their arguments out of inventive genius. Any careful examination, moreover, of a weeks’ political punditry, night-time talk show hosts, television “analysts,” newspaper columnists and editorial writers, will uncover a penchant for deliberate, knowing falsehood in such colossal proportions as to beggar even the wildest imagination. Of course, each wing of the political spectrum is gleeful to point out mendacity by the other, but a soberly unbiased examination of their charges invariably reveals that each extreme is willing to tell the truth – about the other’s lying. For the independent observer, the conclusions are obvious.

How is it, I often ask, that a columnist like George Will, or his counterpart on the opposition side (I confess that I never read liberal commentary – the mind simply boggles at the vapid nonsense there), can hold conservative or liberal views on every issue? How does one do that, while still maintaining any semblance of truthfulness?

And how, caught so often in so much lying, does anyone like that manage to maintain any semblance of integrity?

The present and prior White House administrations are yet another case in point. “I did not have sex with that woman.” Of course, owing to the society’s appetite for the prurient, that was the most famous – or infamous - of President William Jefferson Clinton’s falsehoods. Any even casual examination will reveal literally hundreds, from campaign nonsense to those covering foreign policy pratfalls and malfeasances like losing the “football” – the briefcase holding the key to nuclear destruction of some or many of our enemies. All were covered, or concealment attempted, with lies.

The present administration’s proclivity toward mendacity is so obvious and in such proportions as to beggar description or enumeration. From campaign promises, often nonsense on their face, to asseverations having to do with claimed justification (even that doubtful logically on the basis of irrelevant conclusion) for invasion of Iraq, to falsehoods having to do with near-treasonous relationships with foreign nations, the Bush Administration has gone beyond the pale where credibility is concerned. Suffice it to say that almost nothing attributable to the Bush Administration can be given sober credence.

It’s a nation of liars. Now we bellow to the wide world that still another of our vaunted “freedoms,” that of the impartial court, is a lie.

And, of course, the fact is again an obvious one, acted out daily. Each time a president names someone for a cabinet post, Supreme Court berth, or other position high in government, the opposing political party begins deliberations at least implying that the nominee is a liar and will lie. And, of course, the nominees – to say nothing or those questioning them – do. That under oath and before the entire nation. Each evening, the opposing party makes sure that the public knows of every deviation from truth, and investigation invariably finds that the charge is true. As I said, each extreme is willing to tell the truth about the other’s lying. Not that anyone is surprised. These people, after all, are all but entirely lawyers. This is a government, let us not forget, comprised almost entirely of lawyers or those sustained by lawyers.

The legal profession in the United States, in point of easily demonstrable fact, is infamous as a cult of liars. It was the legal profession, let us not forget, who wrote the liability insurance contract that requires its insured and principals to lie. To paraphrase Admiral Lord Nelson, “The policy of the courts is such that common men would be ashamed to do likewise. All is finesse and trick, to which honesty, integrity, and honor are sacrificed.” The bulk of courtroom practice and procedure, “substantive” law, in fact, is designed to prevent truth and evidence of truth from arriving before the jury. Try to imagine a lawyer willing to sacrifice money or power for truth.

So the nation of liars about everything hopes to remain free, “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty …”

How do you form “a more perfect union” from liars? Do you really think a liar will do what is good for his country, rather than what is good for him? How do you trust with your money and property a government made up of the most power-mad and greedy people you can find? Do you really expect truth from a thief?

When your property and freedom are dependent upon the oath of both court and witnesses whom you know to be liars, how do you really expect “justice?” How do you do that, when you can’t trust a single, solitary soul to keep his word?

How do you trust a liar to stand guard when you sleep? Won’t he always sleep, do whatever he pleases, confident that he can lie his way out of whatever happens? Isn’t that what happened with Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the World Trade Center – just to name a few among myriads? How do you “provide for the common defense” by a government and military industrial complex comprised of liars? Won’t they feather their own nests, provide for their own defense – confident of being able to lie when their derelictions betray their true interests?

You really think people who lie about everything are dedicated to the “GENERAL welfare.” Then why do they lie?

Uh-uh. The high school kid was right. John Adams was, too, but he was wrong about why “democracy never lasts long.” It’s because the people can’t stand the truth.

Sadly, when the inevitable happens, there will be those already among us who remember that I said that. I want them to know that I cared. Whenever I looked into their innocent little faces, I agonized over what I knew was coming for them, what was being bequeathed to them by their self-satisfied, uncaring parents and malfeasant government. I want them to know that I did everything, tortured every fiber in my being, to prevent it. My time, my fellows, their parents and grandparents, would have none of it.

We went on, eating ourselves into grotesque caricatures of humankind, consuming, spending, destroying, and polluting everything given to us and to them by god, confident in lies and lying, the lies and lying we made a reality and way of life, that we would be able to fool the future - our children and their children.

The nation of liars bequeathed to its progeny a lie. Surprise.