James Howard Kunstler: Lying Is the New Normal

05-02-2011 • Kunstler.com

When historians gather around their campfires a half century from now, they will marvel at our idiocy. Among the vital matters we failed to reckon was the diminishing returns of technology as applied to news and information. The slicker our electronic media got, the less sense the public could make of the information stream that they drowned in. How many iPhones and Blackberries are jangling this morning, I wonder, with "news" that Bin Laden was buried at sea because he is Obama's real father? To the Birthers, I'm sure Bin Laden qualified as some sort of "Negro." The story will be on Fox News by suppertime in Atlanta, just watch. You had to love the way Donald Trump pretended to be the hero of the Obama birth certificate story. Has anyone asked for a birth certificate for the creature that is living on Donald Trump's head. I suspect it is a wolverine. Did it come from Michigan or Wisconsin, or possibly Canada? Is it a protected or endangered species? And was it obtained by legal means? (Perhaps he found it in a taxidermy shop.) Is there some way the Navy Seals can drop Donald Trump over the Bermuda Triangle. It would make me proud to be American again. Against the background of what comes to look like a thirty-three ring circus in America's affairs is the remarkable stream of lying that emanates even from places previously thought to be mentally normal.