Lies, Damned Lies and Delusions

The American people are angry. They are frustrated. As calamity engulfs the world they see their president adopting a “What Me Worry?” attitude.

Worse yet, they hate being lied to. They hate being lied to, over and over again, without anyone really caring. It’s an old tactic used by totalitarian propagandists. You keep telling the same lie until people have heard it so much that they assume it to be true.

Back in the day, during the Bush administration, the media was abuzz over the idea that Bush had lied. Everyone was aghast that the president had said that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but then could not find any. Everyone assumed it was a lie.

The reason they thought so was that they do not know what a lie is. They did not see that Bush was merely presenting the best intelligence estimates gleaned from the world’s best intelligence agencies. The estimates were wrong, but there is such a thing as an honest mistake. And making an honest mistake is not the same as a lie.

You recall that a dimwitted comedian made his way into the United States Senate by writing a book entitled: Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Evidently, he has a limited vocabulary. And yet, the concept took hold and America elected a president who promised to disengage from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East. Thanks to the constant attacks on Bush’s truthfulness, coupled with the fact that the war was not going very well, the American people voted for a cowardly pacifist who wanted to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian mullahs.

And, of course, Barack Obama was an exceptionally good liar. Obama and his media enablers see no reason to tell the American people the truth. They simply kept saying that if you like your doctor  you can keep your doctor and that if you like your plan you can keep you plan… knowing all along that it was a gigantic lie.

And we have an administration that forces intelligence officers to skew the data in order to make it appear that Obama’s fabrications about ISIS and Islamic terrorism are true. Not only does Obama circumvent the constitution by acting like a despot. He continues to lie about it.

Better yet, the Democrat party, having seen how successful you can be by lying to the American people, is on the verge of nominating a candidate who is an equally competent liar.

Now, Slate Magazine, hardly a hotbed of conservative thought, has caught the Obama State Department in an especially egregious lie. You see, John Kerry and his spokesman John Kirby have put out a list of the administration’s 2015 foreign policy achievements.

One has no idea what John Kirby, a retired admiral is thinking, but his performance makes you nostalgic for the old days of Jen Psaki and Marie Harf—at least they were good looking.

Anyway, the Obama-Kerry-Kirby progress report touts the administration’s victory in providing Iran with eventual legitimate access to nuclear weapons and immediate access to over a hundred billion dollars. As it happened, Iran did not even sign the deal and does not feel bound to respect it. If that is your greatest achievement you are a failure and ought to bow your head in shame.

And the state department touts a climate change agreement in which all of the world’s nations agreed on nothing. The agreement is worth precisely nothing. It requires nothing of anyone and will never be submitted to the Senate for approval. For the Obama administration the climate change agreement will aid in the fight against Islamist terrorism.

But, these were not even the most egregious distortions. The biggest lie concerns Syria. Something must be seriously wrong with officials who imagine that anyone would accept this assessment as the truth. Sadly, the administration knows very well that the lapdog media will happily look away from reality and will offer up yet another paean on gun control.

Yet, this time, Slate has called the administration out.

The Obama/Kerry/Kirby version was entitled: "Bringing Peace and Security to Syria.” Really, I could not have made this up:

The United States and many members of the international community have stepped up to aid the Syrian people during their time of need – the United States has led the world in humanitarian aid contributions since the crisis began in 2011. Led by Secretary Kerry, the United States also continues to push for a political transition in Syria, and under his stewardship, in December, the UN Security Council passed a U.S.-sponsored resolution that puts forward a roadmap that will facilitate a transition within Syria to a credible, inclusive, nonsectarian government that is responsive to the needs of the Syrian people.

Being a responsible journalistic organ, one that has just seen its faith betrayed, Slate counterpoints the Obama/Kerry/Kirby version with a description from Foreign Policy:

According to the United Nations, as of October 2015 some 250,000 people have been killed in more than four years of civil war (casualty figures for 2015 alone are not yet available). More than 11 million refugees have left the region, many of whom swelled onto European shores in the fall of 2015; it’s not clear how many will ever get asylum in Europe, or elsewhere around the world, including in the United States. A March 2015 UN report also noted that four in five Syrians are now living in poverty.

Slate concludes by quoting the author of that piece:

“[I]n the case of Syria, the five words State used to describe the past year seem at the very least inappropriate and at the worst delusional,” Foreign Policy’s David Francis writes.

Delusional… the word refers to a belief that is so strong that it is impervious to rational consideration or factual verification. A schizophrenic who hears God will never believe that God is not speaking to him. A paranoiac who believes in a vast conspiracy will never be persuaded that there is no such thing.

Delusional beliefs do not need to be limited to psychotics. There are people out there who believe that their left leg is longer than their right leg and that the condition can only be cured by amputation. Since we can measure legs in a way that we cannot measure God, we know that they are deluded. Nevertheless, if you do not accept their belief you are a bigot.

And then there was the woman who came to believe that God had make a mistake by giving her eyesight. She convinced a therapist to pour drain cleaner in her eyes, thus blinding her. She says that she has never been happier.

And, let’s not forget Caitlyn Jenner. In a world founded on delusional lies, she-he-it is clearly the king/queen.