We all know the old saw that goes, “how do you know if a politician is lying?” Answer, “if his lips are moving”. I am glad to see that the Bushies continue to run true to this form. As a matter of fact the latest episode with”Scooter” Libby is a perfect case in point.
First of all, let me say that anyone who answers to a nickname other than Bill for William or Jim for James is automatically suspect. The only knicknames that ever made sense to me were “Pee Wee” as in Pee Wee Reese the legendary shortstop for the old Brooklyn Dodgers and “Moose” Skowron, first basemen for Yankees. You may ask why then, would I like these particular nicknames while eschewing all others? Simple, Pee Wee and Moose had a direct, discernable tie to the personages they represented, either by way of history or of characteristic. As you all know I’m sure, Pee Wee is descriptive of Reese’s time as a champion marble player in Louisville and Moose is a corruption of Mussolini who Skowron was said to have resembled after enduring a home made haircut from his grandfather.
Initially I had some hope for Libby and was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, thinking of course, that the nickname Scooter could only have been derived from the time he must have spent as a second basemen like the old Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto (also of the Dodgers). As it turns out upon closer inspection he got his nickname not because of his ability to “scoot’ across the diamond in persuit of the grand old game, but because his father thought he looked cute scooting across his crib. Uggggh! If every kid whose father thought that they looked cute scooting across their crib got tagged as a Scooter, what a dull world it would be. I, of course, have a more sinister construction of events that led to this paltry appellation. His father being a Wall Street investment banker, knew that Lewis was destined for Yale and Columbia Law or somesuch and wanted him to have an appropriately chi chi label to identify him amongst all the Buffies and Champs lurking in he Ivy League thickets. And by so doing, did an epic disservice not only to his son Libby but to all second basemen in the world who could and should aspire to be a real Scooter.
So more to my point, there are at least four reasons that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Scooter has told some big whoppers and is lying about having told them other than his name:
1. He lives inside the beltway of DC
2. He’s a politician
3. He works for Dick Chaney
4. He’s a Bushie til he dies
Trump Addendum to And Then There Are Liars:
In the short discourse above I was poking fun at Scooter Libbey. You know, the former Chief of Staff to the Vice-President of the United States, Dick Cheney who was no stranger to big whoppers himself. As you may remember poor Scooter was indicted by a federal grand jury for two counts of perjury (lying), two counts of making false statements to federal investigators (lying), and one count of obstruction of justice (lying). So you see that Scooter was no small potatoes in the lying game. All of this had to do with the relatively inconsequential events around determining whether Valerie Plame was or was not a CIA agent.
Let me tell you, on the political lying scale this is minor league stuff. I’m thinking minor league as in the old class D Cactus League San Angelo Colts. Ah, but Trump’s lying. To say it’s major league is an understatement of monumental proportions. He’s at the old New York Yankees level. Think Babe Ruth. Yes, I do mean it. Trump is the Babe Ruth of not just political lying, but lying of all types. Political lying, marketing hyperbole, marital lying, social lying, lying for self aggrandizement. In short, pretty much lying about anything and everything. The record is that Trump is an all-world, maybe even all-universe, or even all-cosmos liar.
The old saw about an inveterate liar is that if he was walking down the street and saw the truth coming right at him, he would quickly cross the street to avoid it. That’s Trump. Now let me be clear, I’ve only met Trump once, and that was in a social circumstance, and as far as I know he did not lie to me to my face. In my assertions here, I rely on numerous sources ad nauseum that have compiled a pretty complete record of Trump’s lies over a long stretch of time. I cite, only one source, Politico, a now well known and respected political journalism company that evidently enjoys keeping track of this kind of thing. According to them, during the recent presidential campaign, 74% of the assertions by Trump either were not the truth or were not wholly true. Wow. How does he keep all the lies straight. Another bit of research asserted that Trump told a lie every five minutes. That almost defies credulity. I don’t know if this five minute calculation includes Trump’s time sleeping or not, but you must admit, it’s pretty darn impressive. It’s not my mission here to lay out a complete record of Trumps fibs as I have neither the interest or the space to include even all of the most recent whoppers. You can look for yourself. As I say, the record of lies is well documented.
Plenty of smart people have hypothesized theories about why Trump lies. The theories are various and often delve deep in his psyche, and are, I believe, most often wrong. I think there is a far more simple explanation. Simply put, he can’t help himself. The urge to lie is so deeply ingrained in his behavior that it would not be reasonable to expect him to tell the truth. Moreover, if you put the truth serum to Trump or lashed him up to a so-called lie detector, he would pass with flying colors. I think it’s more likely than not that he doesn’t know or recognize that what he’s saying at the moment does in no way comport with the truth. In short, he can’t help himself, and therefore, we should not hold him accountable for his lies as, for example, we would hold a bank robber accountable to taking the cash.
The danger, of course, is that in normalizing his lying that we are complicit in creating an alternative reality where we are indifferent to the truth. My only refuge is in the idea expressed in a recent Tom Clancy novel about the evil Ruskies where our hero opines about the tyrannical Russian dictator, “But it is not possible to tell a lie well enough to make it true”. I hope Tom is right.
