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IPFS News Link • General Opinion

The Art of the Lie

• By Robert Ringer RobertRinger.com

The lost decade of the sixties brought relativism up to a whole new level, as millions of young people were relieved to discover that lying is a perfectly acceptable alternative to truth telling.  The tone was set by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, along with underlings like Robert McNamara, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Dean Rusk, all of whom repeatedly lied about the costly, spreading war in Southeast Asia.

Of course, no one went to jail … or was even indicted … or impeached.  After all, what's the big deal about lying, even if it destroys untold numbers of lives and families — both in the United States and on the other side of the globe?

Then, along came Richard Nixon in 1968, who dutifully carried on the subterfuges surrounding the Vietnam War.  At one point, he even told the American public, without blinking an eye, that he was going to bomb Cambodia "to shorten the war."  (That must have been when he earned the moniker "Tricky Dick.")

Unfortunately for Nixon, he stayed around a bit too long, and when he naively put his trust in a sniveling little nerd named John Dean, it was the beginning of the end for him.  Republicans, of course, once again proved that they're always ready to eat their own by giving full support to their Democratic soulmates, thus forcing Tricky to resign.  No doubt Jeff Flake has fantasies about how exhilarating it would have been had he been involved in going after Nixon.

Today, of course, high-level politicians don't resign when they're caught lying, because they realize they can get away with it.  They are well aware that their counterparts in both parties, with just a handful of exceptions, aren't about to do anything to weaken the power structure that has made it possible for them to commit crimes without having to worry about punishment.

It wasn't surprising, then, that two decades later Bubba got away with wagging his finger at the American public and chastising those who didn't believe him by saying that he "did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky."  Understandably feeling an abundance of confidence, he then outdid himself when he answered a perfectly clear question on national television with a Saturday Night Live-type one liner, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word is is."

He then poked his finger in the public's eye by adamantly stating that he intended to serve in his capacity as president until the last minute of the last day of his last term.  And, by golly, he did just that.  (Poor Nixon, he didn't realize that a president could pull that off or he might have tried it himself.)


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