The Link Between Lying and Anti-Individualism

I will tell you all day long that almost everything coming out of Republican mouths is a lie but I will not, I hope, be caught calling them liars. If so it's a slip and I apologize ahead of time. Honesty is not what they are about. When you are trying to take over the world or part of it the truth is a nuisance.

"Truth" implies standards and accountability so even trivial, seemingly inconsequential lies have a purpose, to undermine intelligibility and accountability in general. This is an assertion of power, the desire not to play the game but to control the board. Think back to the tobacco testimony of 1994.

Seven of the well-paid heads of the major tobacco companies testified under oath, before Congress, that they did not think nicotine was addicting. There were no consequences for them personally as far as I know. I can't look into their hearts, minds or souls. I can't tell you what they knew or didn't.

So I can't call them liars, but I can tell you that nicotine is addicting as hell. I can't tell you that the Republicans lining up like sheep to defend a morally indefensible healthcare bill know what they are doing but it is all lies. The lies are both a price of entry and a privilege of membership in their club.

They have lockers full of lies so you don't have to come up with your own, once you have passed the lie initiation. 

Pangs of conscience and even the awareness of the deceit are suppressed through tribal identification and support. Members are protected by reciprocal reassurance. It's moral death and the destruction of individualism, keys to all of our social and religious bonds, not that they believe is such sentimentality.