They Think We Are Stupid

They--all corporations, all utilities, all world governments, the Bush administration I and II, all TV news programs, all newspapers, all Internet Service Providers, all banks and all cable companies. And maybe they are right. Maybe we are dumber than a bag of dead batteries. This past Wednesday, Verizon’s DSL service (digital subscriber line) melted down in Pennsylvania and Delaware. All Verizon had to do was put out an advisement that a stupid underling had been trying to upgrade Verizon’s software and deleted the service instead. But even though the outage happened at 6:30 AM, Verizon made no announcement whatsoever. DSL users assumed their computers were at fault and tried to make their own repairs. When Verizon did admit they were at fault they sent out an announcement that they were “experiencing difficulties” and the service would be up and running shortly. “Shortly” was 12 hours later. What does Verizon, or any corporation or government entity for that matter, think will happen if they tell the truth? Do they think we will love them less? Newsflash to all corporations, all news groups, all governments: WE DO NOT LOVE YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE. If you tell us the truth, we can’t think less of you than we already do. We have the least possible regard for all of you on your best day. Everytime we get suckered into believing a piece of PR hype, such as, “the problem will be fixed shortly”, only after hours and hours do we remember that the phrase is baloney. Why do we believe the lies? Dumb no doubt plays a role. But it’s also because understanding that a faceless corporation or government has lied to us, can only lead to the conclusion so favored by lawyers: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus--false in one thing, false in all. As a nation, we have a fairly positive outlook, we don’t want to think we are being lied to by everyone all the time. Some lies some of the time, is the policy that has worked in the past. However, the BushMen showed that Americans will buy into horrendous lies and swallow outrageous PR hype during times of upheaval, and other powerful entities in the world--corporations, utilities, banks, news groups, etc.--are having success using the WH ploy. If Americans are kept afraid, they can be sold anything by anyone. The White House now is saying there never were any WMDs, but they thought there were and that’s why we went to war. No they didn’t think there were WMDs. They thought we would buy the lie that there were WMDs. There is documentation that the Bush administration was told early on there were no WMDs. The WH went to war because they wanted to go to war. Armstrong Williams, who received $240,000 from the GOP to hype the White House “No Child Left Behind” program on-air and in print says he’s a fledgling in the news game and didn’t know that being paid to support a government program was wrong. Liar, liar, pants on fire. He well knew. As the New York Times Frank Rich reported on January 13th, “Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC”. Verizon knew they screwed up immediately after their DSL service went down but they left subscribers to twist in the wind. The MSM knew our war in Iraq was based on a false premise but they are in the GOP’s back pocket so they wouldn’t tell the truth. CNN knows Bob Novak is a slimeball guilty of telling lies about the CIA’s Valerie Plame and John Kerry’s Viet Nam record, but CNN won’t hold his feet to the fire. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is an MD who said AIDs can be transmitted by tears and sweat. He admitted on Meet the Press that AIDs cannot be transmitted in this way. Here’s what it boils down to. The 48% of the American voters who voted for John Kerry know everyone and his grandmother is lying to us all the time. Say 10% of Republican voters have now become enlightened because the BushMen are such egregious assholes. That’s 58% of American voters know everyone is lying to us all the time. The Democrats do not have to become more like Republicans. The Democrats do not have to kiss the ass of the born-again faction. The Democrats do not have to learn how to be sleazier and play more dirty tricks than the GOP. Democrats could probably just sit and wait for the Republican policy of lying and deceit to fall apart. But while waiting for the inevitable, Democrats need to show that Americans want to know the truth. That shouldn’t be difficult. Americans hate being lied to.