Morality, Where Art Thou?
Let’s get one thing straight: politicians have been liars for all of my life. The degree of those lies has varied. Take someone like Mitt Romney. He was once governor of Massachusetts. And an OK one at that. But in order to run for office in a more progressive area like the Northeast, he had to be somewhat liberal. Compare his views from that turn of the century to now and you’ll see some glaring differences. Rolling Stone actually compiled a lot of them together in this article.
Barack Obama, famously, was once opposed to gay marriage. He’s since changed his mind. Does that make him a liar? Kind of. Sure, it’s nice to say he “evolved” on the issue but that doesn’t do much for the folks ostracized by him 20 years ago. Elizabeth Warren once claimed to have native heritage (allegedly based on family lore). After taking a DNA test, which did nothing to prove her heritage and only served to insult and demean indigenous people, she had to apologize for it. You see, there’s more than DNA that makes a person “native”. Does this count as a lie? Only Liz knows for sure.
There was a time when the lying a politician did was acceptable and mostly harmless. They might exaggerate their opponent’s record on the issues or inflate the potential damage a policy could inflict. But we all pretty much shared the same reality. And then something began to change. Staring with the presidency of George W. Bush, the lies morphed into something different, more destructive. To understand this change, we have to go back quite a few years, back to the presidency of Richard Nixon.
It was during the 1970s that Roger Ailes first conceived what would eventually become realized as Fox News. You see, Roger thought that the Watergate scandal could have mitigated, if not buried outright, had Nixon only been able to control the media narrative that surrounded it. At the time, newspapers and networks were mostly concerned with telling the truth. But, in Ailes's mind, if there was a network that existed to counteract those other networks with a spun (or outright fabricated) version of what happened, Nixon could have steered his supporters there. His aim was to create an alternate reality full of “alternate facts” to quote Kellyann Conway, that would muddy the waters of reality.
Throughout the 90s and 00s, Fox News was the go-to place for conservatives seeking a place friendly to their lies. And before you get all “both sides lie” I can assure you that Fox News engages in deception and fabrication far more than any other major news network. And the thing that makes their lying different, more insidious, is that it is coordinated. The line between a news channel (if you can even call Fox News that) making bad-faith attacks with a specific slant and being a simply propaganda network can get blurry.
Fox News was always suspect but less than a decade ago, a new political animal emerged that gradually took over. That animal, Donald Trump, was initially opposed by Fox News. He even complained about the network throughout the presidency. During the primaries, he railed against what he saw as bad coverage from Fox. But slowly, as it became clear that Trump would be the chosen candidate, Fox News had no choice but to back their viewers’ choice.
This is when reality broke. And it didn’t take long. Remember how days after Trump became president the lies began. He would eventually tally up more than 30,000 (!!!!!) lies over his 4 years in office. That’s like 20 per day. No other politician, on either side of the spectrum, lied like he and his cronies did. Remember this gem?
Or this one?
It only got worse from there.
I won’t name all of them. I don’t have the time or energy to do so. But there were plenty and many of them destructive beyond whatever subject they were about. The idea was to fill the ether with so many lies, so many half-truths, so many misleading things, that the TRUTH became something nebulous. Millions of people ate it up and went along with the standards-lowering tactic, refusing to see what was plainly in front of them. This is when two realities were created: one of mostly truth, another of manufactured lies.
Lying, and other immoral, unethical practices have become so commonplace that hardly a day goes by when a conservative politician doesn’t tell a whopper. Just the other day, noted insurrectionist lover Josh Hawley tried to smear SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson by basically saying she was cool with kiddie porn peddlers. It was so egregious that even a hardline conservative like Andy McCarthy called him out for it.
But will Hawley face any real consequences for his disgusting actions? Nah. Why would he?
We find ourselves in a sad state of affairs. Fox News isn’t just causing harm at home. Russia, you know, the people currently bombing the crap out of their neighbor, killing thousands of civilians, and committing war crimes, LOVES the coverage their invasion is getting on Fox.
They’ve rebroadcast parts of Tucker Carlson’s show, Hannity’s show, and White Power Hour Laura Ingraham’s show, all in an effort to legitimize their actions. Fox News is actively helping the Russian government lie to its own people about what is going on in Ukraine. We’ve reached the point where conservatives would rather side with a foreign enemy over Americans who share different (and way more popular) views than them. It’s borderline treasonous.
I don’t know if there is a solution to this. American laws are incredibly weak when it comes to spreading lies and disinformation. Rightfully so. It’s not hard to imagine someone gaining power and outlawing honest journalism to insulate themselves from criticism. I can think of one person who might want to do that.
It seems that America, and Americans, especially conservative ones, have accepted this as the new norm. We have turned morality upon its head and accepted that the worst among us now set the standard.
Personally, I think a lot of this began with advertising and the cure for our acceptance of lies would be to start there. We’re so used to seeing misleading ads that we have slowly begun to expect everything to be untrue. Ever get a burger that looks nothing like the one on TV? Or see the SUV blazing through snow and ice only to see the fine print that you should, under no circumstances, attempt to do that? What about “unlimited data” cell phone plans that don’t actually offer “unlimited” data? I could go on and on. Advertising has beaten and lulled us into accepting a reality that doesn’t match our expectations. We accept it because we feel like we have no choice.
Politicians have taken note and often employ marketing veterans to work on their campaigns. They know the best ways to mislead, deceive, and outright lie without being seen as unethical. It is disgraceful. But until we demand more from our leaders, we will keep getting the same ol’ crap. And while I agree that there are liars on both sides of the aisle, conservatives, egged on by lying “news” outlets like Fox and Newsmax, do this with far less shame and far more frequency.
So I ask the people: where is your morality? Have you left it behind? Or are you willing to stand up to the people who tell you lies because they are saying what you already want to know?