Thursday, February 09, 2012

Lies that Won't Fly, or, Wingnut Defilade

I must be getting cynical or something.

It's not so much a sort of general outlook sort of thing. It's just that I've gotten completely used to - still a trifle irked with, but used to - the idea that "conservatives" will lie about whether the sky is blue or the grass is green if it serves their purposes, or if it doesn't, or when the sky IS blue, or for no reason at all.

As an example of this, I give you the second sentence in today's editorial in the World's Worst Newspaper by Susan "I'm an independent, no, really, I am, I just HAPPEN to have the same position as the wingnuts 99.86% of the time" Nielsen:
"The Obama administration picked a fight it was sure to lose by decreeing that all Catholic hospitals and other religiously affiliated employers should be required to offer birth control."
In fact, think I gave her some extra credit for waiting until the second sentence to lie out her ass.

It's not like I EVER expected the truth from these gomers on some things.

For example, I have always and fully expected to hear lies about gays from these wingnuts, other than the truly unhinged and rabidly feral ones, the ones that really believe that Baby Jesus cries when gay people have sex.

The semi-sentient ones, the others, the ones who know full well that they have lived with and befriended and partied with and shot the shit with homosexuals of various flavors for years, who know perfectly clearly that their position on denying these other human beings the legal sanction of their personal union is both inhumane and idiotic, are just straight lying, however they may try to shove their fingers in their ears and chant "lalalalalalala!" to drown the savage condemnation of their own consciences.

They really have no option, given the unhinged condition of their faction; it's either lie to us or tell the truth to themselves, and they can't do the latter, their brains would probably explode.

But it's one thing to lie to try and save oneself from self-immolation.

So that kind of wingnut lie never bothered me. But it's another thing entirely to lie about simple, obvious facts. And it's here that I can feel myself sliding down into a sort of frustrated anger-defilade. Because it used to set me alight when I'd read these ridiculously idiotic bullshit lies, lies that wouldn't convince a four-year-old, amateurish, moron-grade, sad, shitty little lies about simple facts that were gob-smackingly obvious to a gibbering poop-flinging monkey.
(Let me add here that my experience in the fine art of lying comes from when I was posted at Ft. Bragg. I had a friend there, Alfie, who was a sort of Vegas-blackjack-dealer-class liar, a positive maestro of the lie, a man who could lie to your face about something you knew positively otherwise and may you believe him with the effortless grace of water sliding off a cat's ass.

One thing Alfie always insisted on was that you had to lie around a core of the truth; the essence of a lie that will fly is not that it's true, and is not that you'd like it to be true, or you want it to be true but that it COULD be true.

In that respect your desires actually get in the way of telling a truly effective lie, and so it has proved. The things that wingnut "conservatives" usually like and want to be true are either hopelessly moronic or physically impossible; a "free market" (as if the second and third merchant in Babylon hadn't immediately colluded against both the first merchant and all their customers or that their breed had stopped ever since...), "low taxes and strong defense", "social decency", "job creators"...you get the picture.

So the lies they tell are, by their very nature, ridiculous. They aren't built around a core of truth, they're built around a core of pink rhinoceros fairy dust, so for those of us who don't spend six or seven hours a day hammering a FOX "News" cork into the top of our heads to keep the packing peanuts from fluffing out the idiocy is so apparent as to be kind of embarrassing.

Alfie would have told them that they had their heads jammed up their fourth point of contact so far they could see the back of their own teeth; that was the kind of guy he was.)
So I've been reading wingnut after wingnut going on and on about this whole ridiculous business of how the Evil Kenyan Usurper, the New Justinian, the Scourge of God, is making all these poor holy prelates pay for flushing the bleeding fetuses out of women's wombs as they sob and pray for righteousness, just like this Neilsen idiot. And back in the day I'd have gone utterly, full-gonzo, bull-goose looney, totally Asiatic, really medieval on their lying ass. And then here comes this Neilsen goof, and I'd have hung her up and flayed her like a windsock.

Because "decreeing that all Catholic hospitals and other religiously affiliated employers should be required to offer birth control" is, simply, an incredibly simple, rudely stupid lie. A lie as amateurish as the eight-year-old caught pissing her pants who looks down at the spreading yellow stain and mumbles "Uhhhhh...it wasn't me..."

And because the truth is a lot simpler, like most truths.

The Catholic - and other religious employers - are offered a simple choice.

Charlie Pierce describes this choice in his usual delightfully rotund fashion:
"...the president has told various Catholic institutions — and told them quite gently, too — that, yes, if they want all those nice juicy tax advantages, they must abide by the federal law and, in their capacities as employers, make contraceptives available to their employees under the new Affordable Care Act."
Period.

That's it.

So no, Susie, no one is "decreeing" anything.

No cardinals or priests are being hauled weeping and praying into the regulatory arena where they will be devoured by ruthless federal health bureaucrats.

No one is demanding that Plan B be offered up with the Eucharist, or that good Catholic matrons be offered contraceptive devices (and wouldn't these good matrons refuse the offer, anyway?) and, when they refuse to accept them, be held down by the Contraception Goon Squad and forcibly contracepted.

Tax break? Contraceptives for those who want 'em.

It's that simple.

And - as little as a couple of years ago - the incredible arrogance of this lying little Neilsen shit would have been enough to spin me up like a fucking Beyblade Metal Master.

I'd have gone off on the issue to all my friends who had the patience to listen as well as writing a long blog post about how utterly fucked-up this was and what it said about the desuetude of American politics, throwing in allusions to the fall of the Roman Republic and all sorts of other dire warnings of what this Meant To Our Future.

And now?

It's just like watching a cow. It wanders around, shits everywhere, and what the hell can you do about it? It's not worth getting excited about. It just is.

These people are just lost. Gone. Pinin' for the fjords. A rough third of the U.S. public has gone and taken the mental dirt nap. Their brains are good to holding their hats off their shoulders, and that's about it. And where that used to frustrate the hell out of me and madden me to fury, I've gotten so I just shrug.

Rain is wet, night is dark, "conservative" liars lie.

But I think there's a worse part to this.

Because I used to believe that the third of the U.S. public who sits their staring at these knuckleheads like they've never seen a cow or heard a lie would smell their bullshit and hear their lies and get tired of being lied to by a herd of goddamn beefwits and toss the idiots out into the far end of the pasture.

And I don't believe that anymore.

And that feels like heading down into a very deep defilade, indeed.

6 comments:

Leon said...

And didn't Obama immediately back down?

Regarding the whole wing-nut fundies, I recently saw an image through Reddit that pointed out Canada's had gay marriage for 7yrs and we haven't sunk into the sea, there's no heavenly fire from an angry zombie jew, straight people continue to marry (and get divorced) and no one's tried to marry a poodle.

Yay us.

FDChief said...

Indeed he did, Leon. And I used to get sick when I heard that sort of news. Now I just sigh.

I really wonder. I think we may have to travel a way down the road towards a place where ignorant fundies and wingnuts clash by night. I still have a hope - a dim hope, but a hope - that once we've peered into that abyss we'll want our souls back. But that's when we'll know, won't we?

I read today that something like 50-60% of the U.S. public is in favor of war with Iran if they are "suspected" of trying to go nuclear.

The depth of foolery in our fools is profound, indeed. And we have so many, many fools...

Ael said...

Yes, Canada is surviving the onslaught of gay marriage without visible harmful effect.

It has lead, however, to a supreme court challenge over bigamy. After all, if the male-female thing is open to contention, why should the number two be a fixed limit. Arguments have been heard and we are awaiting a ruling.

In the U.S.A. can the government pass a law that says "You get a $100 tax credit if you come down to the local IRA office and publicly eat a bacon sandwich" Would that not fall afoul of anti-discrimination laws?

Lisa said...

Interesting that you discuss truth 1 hr + 1 min after RAW did.

Questions of truth have been flying fast and furious around here. Seems like something's afoot.

FDChief said...

Ael: The law legislates best that legislates least, so the answer would be that it would and that would be the reason not to pass such a law.

In this case, however, it's the other way around. The law says "You have to offer bacon AND non-bacon sandwiches in your lunchroom, or you DON'T get the tax break. You can choose to ONLY offer bacon to your Jewish employees, but then no sweet, sweet tax breaks for you!"

Lisa: Indeed. And I have more to say on this subject of the ridiculous "sensitivity" of the U.S. governing classes to "religious freedom".

FDChief said...

Ael: On the question of "bigamy"...

I've never been impressed with the arguments for a role for religious doctrine in public policy. IMO the state's only business in personal relationships is to ensure that 1) they are entered into only by consenting adults and 2) where they involve legal contracts, such as the care of children and things like debt.

So, frankly, why NOT bigamy? Why NOT incest? You want to marry your sisters - or BOTH your twin sisters - what possible LEGAL argument can I defend?

Assuming that all three of you are of legal age, and of sufficient mental capacity to make an informed decision, why should my sqwickiness regarding your choice be a negating factor, or a factor at all?

The bottom line is that monogamy is the rule in many societies, suggesting that human beings will tend to pair-bond, and the prohibitions against incest in most societies will ensure that incest remains extremely rare. But why should the Christian "rule" of heterosexual monogamy trump the Polynesian "rule" of polygamy, or the Greek tradition of homosexual monogamy, in civil law?

I'm very convinced that if we could get around the social prejudices surrounding these things we'd find that civil society wouldn't fall apart because the family down the block consists of two moms and three dads, any more than because it consists of two moms or two dads.

Enshrining emotional or religious prejudice into law doesn't make it better law...