This is What Happens When You Fail to Refute the Lies

It's difficult to remember, but as recently as 2-1/2 years ago, the lies told by republicans were still infrequent enough, and confined mostly to the fringe, that they stood out from the bulk of political discourse, which while banal and misleading was not 100 percent blatantly mendacious.

It was, of course, the election - the historical landslide election - of a black man to the presidency that drove republicans to the desperate measure of inventing baseless, ludicrous, insane lies that defied reason.

But it was 100 percent the fault of President Barack Obama that those lies, instead of exposing their tellers as douchebags unfit for public life, became the common currency of American politics.

Because Barack Obama failed to call out the motherfucking liars for lying about fucking their mothers.

KeninNY at Down With Tyranny:

By now I trust everyone has read our friend Rick Perlstein's screed for the Daily Beast, ("How Obama Enables Rush") in which he proceeds from the painfully obvious but rarely articulated truth: "We live in a mendocracy. As in: rule by liars." But in case anyone missed it, let me suggest that this is one piece you can't afford to miss.

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Not once but twice I quoted this bit from a Frameshop post by Jeffrey Feldman, "What America Needs to Hear About Jerome Corsi" (whose smearbook on Barack Obama had just been published), about the impossibility of "debating" a compulsive liar:

This book and books like it destroy our political culture, undermine fair elections, inhabit the slippery space between politics and slander. . . .

These books destroy civic debate on purpose -- and are fundamentally at odds with democracy. The goal of Corsi's project is not to discuss facts -- it is to destroy the very possibility of discussion by implying that a Presidential candidate is a sleeper-cell terrorist -- and doing so in the context of a huge broadcast media effort to convince the country of the same thing.

That is not just factually wrong. It is wildly immoral. Whether or not Corsi published lies is not even half the discussion we should be having.

Let me repeat that crucial proposition: "These books destroy civic debate on purpose."

Rick Perlstein has his own take on this proposition. I've quoted it at the top of this post, but it's too important not to repeat:

When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins. When it becomes "uncivil" to call out liars, lying becomes free.

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Republican politicians, and conservative commentators, told them Barack Obama was a tax-mad lunatic. They lied. The mainstream media did not do their job and correct them. The White House was too polite—"civil," just like Obama promised—to say much. So people believed the lie. From this all else follows.

And it was all too predictable.

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The vector worked, and works, like this:

(a) A mountebank teaches his millions of followers that everything the president says is a priori a lie;

(b) The mainstream media that acts as if anything his millions of followers believe is a priori deserving of respect as heartland folk wisdom (note the cover article lionizing Limbaugh in this week's Newsweek);

(c) The president unilaterally renders himself constitutionally incapable of breaking the chain between (a) and (b), such that, (d), the assumption that Obama raised taxes when he really lowered them becomes hegemonic for a majority of the electorate, and even a large plurality of Democrats.

Q.E.D.: Governing has become impossible.

Is governing possible when the opposition stands by while a screeching coalition of loonies and liars pretends that the president isn't really a U.S. citizen? And get indignant when the obvious racist motivation is pointed out?

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Not to worry, however. Now that public discourse can no longer be measured against standards of truth, it's safe to guess that campaigns of lies as virulent as the racially charged ones told about Barack Obama will be launched on other-than-racial bases. Every manner of prejudice and delusion can be pressed into service. (Did someone say "death panels"?)

Read the whole thing.

Civil discourse is dead. You cannot fight this level of vicious mendacity with polite language, much less reason or logic.

We have to attack the rethuglican lies and liars at every turn. No more polite questions like "Really? Based on what?"

Now it has to be in-your-face "Liar! That's a lie! Stop telling that lie!"

These people are literally tearing this country down with their lies, and every time each of us hears or reads a rethuglican lie without stopping to attack the liar directly we are contributing to the destruction.

Unless you are in or have been in the military, you will never do anything for your country more important right now than every day and in every way:

Calling out the motherfucking liars for lying about fucking their mothers.