The Bigger the Lie, Donald Trump, and If I Had a Hammer

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Death may be inevitable for us all, but not for all the lies we tell. In fact the bigger the lie, the longer it lasts and as any student of ancient literature knows, old lies never die. They don’t even fade away.

Take the $600 hammer Donald Trump pulled out of it’s moldy coffin the other day as an example of the kind of gross overspending he would eliminate. Perhaps it was an act of deliberate cunning seeing as the hammer that got so much publicity 35 years ago actually cost about $15. The apparent cost overrun was an “accounting artifact” and the development and engineering costs of a long list of other items was added into the cost of the hammer and subtracted from those items. We’ve known this for decades but a good lie is too useful to let die. Trumps applauding fans seemed too damned ignorant to know or too full of idiotic fury to want to remember.

Anything that makes Obama look bad becomes immortal. Any mention of his having slashed deficit spending or those “socialist” bailouts having returned a profit — any mention of a return to nearly full employment and six years of growth is washed away with a distracting lie. It doesn’t say much for the small minority who support Trump and the Tea Party crazies. It doesn’t inspire hope for America. Even John Boehner seems to agree that the New GOP is the old MOB, complete with lanterns and pitchforks and fear. What worries me if not the outgoing Speaker of the House is that the madness of the Trump-loving, government hating mob will make Carly Fiorina seem almost Presidential. Perhaps she already does to the desperate and not too bright — and maybe to those who didn’t watch her obvious lies on Meet The Press Sunday morning where in response to repeated questions about evidence for the obviously fake video trying to damn Planned Parenthood she could only repeat with a knowing twinkle in her lying eye: “it happens, it’s happening.”

“keep it alive so we can harvest the brain” Seriously? has someone watched too many Zombie movies? Shades of James O’Keefe and his fraudulent videos of ACORN employees, chopped and crudely spliced to make it look like a crime was committed. O’Keefe and accomplices plead guilty and were convicted of attempting the same thing to slander United States Senator Mary Landrieu,

If lies never die, perhaps the truth is often stillborn or soon forgotten while the continuously repeated lie becomes true and immortal. If I had a hammer, a hammer as powerful as the one that never was but always is — if I had that everlasting hammer I’d smash the mouths of the liars, and all those who perpetuate the lies, the slanderers, the frauds and use it all to elect some mad tyrant.

Love thine enemy — is that advice or is that our curse?