All deceit is harmful, even the blatantly absurd, like the silly rumor that litter boxes are now in school restrooms to accommodate students who identify as cats. As silly as it is, the narrative attacks the authenticity of transgender students, who deal with callous mockery every day of their lives. No one believes this lie, but it is just as toxic as its more subtle cousins.
Conspiracies are less absurd to those who believe them, so repeating them is like allowing cancer to spread untreated. The rumor that Paul Pelosi’s door was smashed from the inside undermines the tragedy of the attack and makes light of the real pain of a victim. In this case it also underplays the real danger to the life of the Speaker of the House. How much uproar would ensue if this attack was on the wife of the House Minority Leader! The conspiracy is politically weaponized by turning a crime into a scheme and putting Nancy Pelosi in more serious danger.
Blatant lies and libels spread through tacit acceptance. Much of what Donald Trump says expands unchecked, such as his denying election results or claiming a Justice Department plot against him. The ex-President libels the President, military officers, even the “Rino” Republicans he dislikes, without the slightest tremor from fellow Republicans. He creates a cone of silence among those who dread getting the “Rino” label (“Republicans In Name Only”). So deceit evolves into a reign of terror.
The most insidious form of deceit is the Campaign Con, which is a particular skill of, but not exclusively practiced by, the Republican Party. By stating their objectives in broad generalities, they pretend there are no consequences to tax decreases or removal of regulations. They just use them as dog whistles to attract unthinking voters.
Rep Ann Wagner’s platform states: “I’ll continue to fight back against the Left’s radical agenda that has raised taxes on middle class families, increased the cost of groceries and utilities, and grown our national debt.” Let’s unpack this tax con. First, the Biden administration has not raised taxes on citizens making under $400,000 and that is conceded by Amanda Critchfield of the GOP Finance Committee:
If you’re referencing the individual tax rate in the tax code changing, i.e., a change on your tax form, then no — that doesn’t change,” she said in an email. “If you’re talking about people paying more in taxes via tax incidence, then yes — JCT estimates that people will pay more in taxes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/09/senate-bill-bidens-pledge-not-raise-taxes-people-making-more-than-400000/
Critchfield takes us into the weeds of “incidental increases” of the “Inflation Reduction Act, ” which she says raises taxes on people earning less than $400,000. This is deeper than most voters want to go, so the con claims merely that the Act raised taxes on middle class earners. However, a non-partisan analysis of the Act includes the savings to the middle class as well as the added costs, so the argument that it increases “incidental taxes” is equally deceitful.
“A complete distributional analysis of the full bill would show lower costs or taxes for all but the highest-wealth individuals,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. A memo issued by the CRFB says that “the $64 billion on ACA subsidies alone would be more than enough to counter net tax increases below $400,000 in the JCT study,” while the bill also reduces “prescription drug costs for individuals (premiums and out of pocket) by roughly $300 billion. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/09/senate-bill-bidens-pledge-not-raise-taxes-people-making-more-than-400000/
By now, we are so deep into the weeds, that the average tax-payer is just going with Ann Wagner’s original statement that the Democrats “raised taxes” on middle class families, but the final analysis of the “Inflation Reduction Act” shows that it is a tax con no matter how you look at it.
By the way, the name “Inflation Reduction Act” is a Democratic con, because the bill, in the final analysis, does nothing to reduce inflation. You can be sure a bill with that timely title will probably entail deceit. We know that most spending bills are going to increase inflation, although some might be inflation neutral. Some analyses show the Inflation Reduction act as inflation-neutral. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/09/senate-bill-bidens-pledge-not-raise-taxes-people-making-more-than-400000/
Here’s a Campaign Con from Eric Schmidt. “The most important thing for government to do is to respect that parents have every right to play a central role in their children’s education . . . I fought for a Parents’ Bill of Rights, which would protect parents’ rights to have a well-informed say in their children’s education . . .”
First of all, the term “government” is used as a substitute for “school board,” which is the determiner of the local school curriculum. The enforcer is the State government, which specifies the rights of parents to influence the school curriculum. So what Schmidt advocates is the State government’s overruling of the local government, ie. the school board, on the subject of school curriculum, a policy contradicting the Republican principle of local control.
With a sleight of phrase Schmidt turns “curriculum” into “ideology” and “school board” into “government” in this statement. “Government should not push specific political ideologies onto children and parents should have the necessary tools and information to understand what their child is being taught.”
This campaign con first suggests that parents are being strong armed by the school board, whereas a 2022 poll by IPSOs/ NPR found that 76% of respondents agree that “my child’s school does a good job keeping me informed about the curriculum, including potentially controversial topics.” The issue of transparency is a red herring, because curricula are a matter of public record. When teachers adopt new books supporting the curriculum they must go through an approval process that includes the school administration.
The allegation of pushing “political ideologies onto children” relates to bad teaching. No teacher should insist on any ideology, because that would be indoctrination, and indoctrination is bad teaching. Teaching methods that avoid indoctrination are taught in the licensing process, and teachers who lapse into that lazy form of teaching should be disciplined by their supervisors. If it becomes a public issue, then parents should testify, as well as students.
The objection, I suspect, is that any controversial historical event is addressed in the curriculum. For example, should the Holocaust be taught as an indisputable event of European history? Should the existence of U.S. Japanese internment camps be juxtaposed with German Concentration Camps? Some might call these controversies, but teaching them properly is not “indoctrination.”
Obviously Campaign Cons are more subtle and complex than other forms of deceit, but they are a powerful influence on voters. How easy is it to say, “Democrats have raised taxes” or “Schools have promoted certain ideologies,” without going into the definition of “taxes” or “ideologies”? The devil is literally in the details, because the devil is “the father of lies.”
There may be silly or unbelievable lies, but there are no harmless lies. P.T Barnum knew this when he said, “A sucker is born every minute.” Any ignored deceit that leaks into the media becomes a potion poisoning our souls. Damage may be direct or collateral, but it is potent, nevertheless.
If you are a voter, take deceitfulness seriously. Depend on your trustworthy sources and pay attention when they uncover lies. Dismantle deceit from any source–Republicans, Democrats, Dis-informants. Informed voters are not dupes.