Those Who Love and Live by Lies

By Dan Hagen

They like all the lies.

By now, it’s clear that America’s 21^st century right wingers are the implacable enemies of honest, intelligent people, and will move against them at every possible opportunity, in every way possible — whether they are teachers, reporters, union members, politicians, scientists, philanthropists or Hollywood actors. Count on it. This fight is for all the marbles.

They don’t want the truth. They want lies, and they’re getting them.

Note how anyone who might promote critical thinking and rational judgment — science, the university, teachers, objective textbooks, the smarter elements of the press — is under constant attack from the American right, particularly Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

The problem is that much of the white working class in 21^st century America actually likes to be lied to, just as long as their prejudices are vigorously massaged by the people who are picking their pockets and robbing them of their rights.

These fact-fearing sheep like to think that absolutely all the answers can be found in their ancient Bibles, their 18th century economic theories and grandma's stack of yellowing Reader’s Digests.

H. L. Mencken described a group of Americans who intended “to repeal learning by statute, regiment the arts by lynch-law and give the puerile ethical and theological notions of lonely farmers and corner grocers the force and dignity of constitutional axioms.”

What I want to know is, how did Mencken ever hear about the Tea Party?

The Tea Partiers aren’t conservative, by the way. Real conservatives believe in paying their debts, not in threatening to default on them, and do not cheer for the deaths of their indigent neighbors. The Tea Partiers are radical right-wing populists being puppeteered by corporate fascists.

As Mike Dennison succinctly observed, “Republicans go after the thinkers for thinking, the poor for being poor, the teachers for teaching, the gays for loving each other, and the Democrats for caring about their fellow man.”