Lies Can’t Be Righteous if They’re Hypocritical

I get that politicians have the right to lie to folks about nearly anything but I also get that they have the right to tell the truth about things too. It’s even understandable that any politician has to put on a show for the folks back home. But ideally any politician would also want to do something to help the folks back home with problems they experience and that he can help address though his office. What I do not understand is why any politician would be a cheerleader for dismantling the Government they are elected to serve. Isn’t that a kind of antimatter to solving problems? That behavior appears to me to be creating problems as opposed to solving them. Righteousness is not a way to measure competence, you know? I mean any set of beliefs have behavior that are righteous. That does not mean that the feeling of righteousness is well founded. It might not even exist in reality.

I don’t suppose it makes any difference when all is said and done if someone’s actions are or are not righteous. But I think it makes a difference when behavior which harms other people is justified as righteousness. I think such behavior is more aligned with hypocrisy, myself. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Every media story about the ex-president is about what atrocities he has committed and/or how the defense makes it all better. What was the horror of the day? Now what did that bad man say? Ooo, how are you and Fani getting along today? It’s all Biden’s fault. The world is about to end (again), but I alone can save it. I do not have facts and figures for this, but it surely does seem that every scary thing the ex does sells media advertising because people like to watch train wrecks and the media is going to have coverage of anything people will watch. It doesn’t change from one slant to another. There is only one set of events to report, after all. The events mostly are just that, events. They really have no slant at all. But they can be spiced up just the way you like it. They may have slanted repercussions, surely, no matter how good they taste to you at the moment, but the event is the same for all media. For any media outlet to claim righteousness over their particular slant while naysaying another media outlet for their slant is still hypocrisy, isn’t it?

Here’s another example: it appears that there is a band of lost boys in Congress who are determined, to hear them tell it, to cause the nation to miss its payments on its debt. Now that is highly unlikely to actually take place because sometime before that should take place there will be a come-to-Jesus meeting with the powers that actually be and the lost boys will be found again. But there will not be any media coverage of that inevitability. Why am I so sure this will actually be the outcome? Do you think some spoiled white boy from Florida would survive the night should he cause such an economic catastrophe? One could surmise that could be an impossible task to achieve. Therefore, it will not transpire. There will be a compromise with threats of future temper tantrums over some new and improved media fantasy horror show. But the hypocrisy is the point we’re examining. The hypocrisy is in the drama created for and by the media to sell advertising. The more it resembles a dramatic train wreck the more advertising it will bring in because people love all that drama stuff. But the media can not keep itself from making money, so it hypes the drama. It’s why they do what they do. The hype doesn’t change the event, it merely accents something that people want to see.

I’m not saying any of this because I think there is a conspiracy to hoodwink the American people. I’m saying this because the idea of corporate run media is designed to run with dramatic slant as the draw and hypocrisy as a predictable result. It may be that dramatic hypocrisy is the cost of media coverage. I can live with that even though I would prefer at least acknowledgement of the lean toward one direction or the other. But I find it offensive when a media outlet righteously declares drama to be reality. There is no alternative reality to report. There are different experiences for different people within any given event, to be sure. But the event remains the same. For example, the ex was arraigned in Atlanta. That’s what happened. Everything else was gloating or moaning.

The most hypocritical part of any news report is the segment where someone who ‘knows’ talks about what the future will hold. Apparently they never heard about “que sera, sera” or they just don’t dare believe it. There is no way anyone can predict the drama’s trajectory and instead of just saying that, there is a mandatory discussion about when this particular drama session will develop a third eye or maybe, if we’re lucky, a second head. Doom and gloom are pretty popular news items. I want to know that a tornado tore through a town. I don’t know that the drama that folks went through adds to the cost of the storm or the likelihood that I should beware of a similar event. But we folks do like to see the train wreck up close and personal. So the media hypocritically shows the suffering of the people who are living the tornado. Those images of someone’s desperation does nothing for the someone, but it will generate advertising income.

Hypocrisy can be difficult to see in individuals even though it has become something of a plank in certain political circles. There seems to have been a number of clubs for the hypocritical sprouting up of late. There’s the Q clubbers. The Q-stereers tend to be hypocritically attracted to impossible fantasies of non-existent realities. Then there’s the Magaites. They tend toward wearing matching outfits while making out like the Main Maga is the redeemer come to collect his children. Not to be remiss, I must mention the Militia Mens. You can recognize them because they start what they don’t finish. Their parents were just not successful at communicating the idea that their eyes were bigger than their belly. No matter how righteously folks from these various clubs champion the kind of lies that they prefer, it’s still a hypocritical notion that they know stuff that is not in the public forum. How does one know that JFK will show up in Dallas, for example? An even better question is, how does this kind of hypocrisy become a platform of a political party? Or is it just a catechism to learn and recite as a rite of passage to master before a red magaform is issued. Wouldn’t it be easier to simply say that you’re looking for a short cut to world domination? Why go through the hypocrisy of denying women health care or making it hard for black and brown people to vote. Why not be upfront and just say that you don’t want to be bothered by laws unless you write them for your benefit? In other words, it’s just bad form to claim hypocrisy as a valid position and the hypocritical really have no place in the political conversation. And I don’t think it would be the least bit hypocritical to tell them either.

If you’d like to support John (and any other writer on Medium!), the best way to do so is to engage with this blog. Claps, highlights and comments are the best way to tell Medium that you want to see more of what John writes and help get his blog in front of more people. And if you haven’t already become a Medium member, joining gives you the opportunity to access all of John’s blogs, as well as thousands of other writers on the platform.

Thanks for reading, and John would love to hear your thoughts! Comment below, let’s start a discussion.