There’s no way I would have believed 20 years ago that flooding the planet with easy and instant access to the entire storehouse of human knowledge would allow political leaders to brazenly and endlessly lie about any damned thing they choose.
Thanks to Al Gore’s worldwide web, bandwidth and prolific computers and smartphones, there is virtually nothing that you can’t find out for your very self, very fast.
How many polar bears are left in the wild? It took a third of a second to discover there are about 30,000 left. It took a fraction of a second longer to discover that oil refineries get about 19 gallons of gasoline from every 42-gallon barrel of crude oil.
While Americans may marvel at the latest video games and sea of movies our digital world instantly offers up, if there were any miracle in my lifetime, it would be the Internet and the smartphone, which dramatically changed absolutely everything in the developed world by allowing access to almost everything.
So in a world where the truth is so easily available, how do so many political leaders and others get away with brazenly lying about so much?
The undisputed liar in chief is Donald Trump. He lies about a wide range of statistics, which he uses to defend other lies he tells.
For months now, the media and his Republican peers stood silently as Trump told America that Mexico is flooding our country with rapists. He lied about the unemployment rate. He lied about Muslims in New Jersey cheering the Sept. 11 attacks.
A few weeks ago, his sham presidential campaign became so egregious and such an affront to most of humanity, we demanded that other political leaders call Trump out on his lies, deceits and spurious racist and fascist comments.
Crickets.
Trump came right out and said he wanted to create a national list of American Muslims and close mosques because all Muslims were suspected of being potential terrorists, and despite easy access to indisputable information decrying those claims, he got away with it.
He just kept on lying, fabricating data that he says supports his new plan to prevent Muslims worldwide from entering the United States.
While few have called him out for outright lies, at least, for the first time, Republicans and others have started to criticize Trump’s recent incendiary proposals.
He’s hardly alone in his lies. Hillary Clinton has told lies about when she and Chelsea practically ran for cover under fire while in Bosnia. The video clearly shows it never happened. She’s lied about why her private email server came under scrutiny in the first place.
The truth behind all these lies are easy to uncover on the Internet — and I don’t mean the spurious Fox News or baloney blog fantasies.
Near the top of the heap of recent unconscionable liars is Carly Fiorina, blatantly lying about surreptitious Planned Parenthood tapes that have been repeatedly debunked as outright lies and edited propaganda.
“Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,’” Fiorina told a gasping national audience.
There was no such video. There is no such video. Despite being repeatedly confronted with that and other lies, Fiorina and others just keep repeating them.
And just this week, as a worldwide global warming conference convened to find solutions to the problem of a rapidly warming planet, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas held hearings at the U.S. Capitol and spent hours blatantly lying about data, science and the extent of the problem. Cruz said that he has irrefutable evidence from scientists that there really is no global warming, and that the entire thing is a plan by liberals all over the world to control the lives of everyone, for the sake of having that control.
There is no such data. He’s lying. There are anomaly reports, and questionable, rare people touting them on their surface raises questions, but that’s not how science works. And he knows it. He chooses to blatantly lie about global warming, and the media and the public lets him do it.
I’m not upset about people who bend the facts or skew them for political gain, such as activists on both sides of issues such as gun control. They point out numbers revealing that prolific gun deaths are either wildly overblown by gun control proponents or are inaccurately dismissed for what they really are by gun rights activists.
No. I’m talking about people like state rep. JoAnn Windholz, who lies about the mission, practices and reality of Planned Parenthood. She said those lies were the basis for her unhinged Facebook rant last week about Planned Parenthood being to blame for the Colorado Springs massacre that left a police officer and two others dead.
This must stop. Since being able to discern the truth via a Google search doesn’t stop the lies, the media has to call out unsubstantiated claims on a regular basis instead of politely saying that their lie is simply their opinion. These aren’t opinions, or he-said, she-said disputes. They’re dangerous lies. And that is the truth. Google it.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com.
What did he lie about Perry? It’s just that you don’t agree with him, but see every reason to agree with Obama and any other liberal Democrat, as yourself. I stopped reading at ‘Al Gore’s wonderful internet’ what a bunch of hooey, even coming from you.
gooey “stopped reading”. Apparently he didn’t stop soon enough. Obviously Dave got his goat once again. Truth be known, gooey probably lapped up every last word of Dave’s column going ballistic while howling at the moon.
Nice work Dave. Anyday goo boy is needled is a day to celebrate.
Now that you have found search and google, Dave, why not try to publish the truth, instead of following MSNBC, or Huffington Post. I think they have all seats filled, and besides they don’t pay much, since they put folks on with nothing to say, but they talk or write anyway. Just like you. Trump tells the truth, but since that differs from your opinion, like all Democrats-Progressives-Liberals, or rye catcher, you think it is a lie. Did you two go to same school, by the way? I don’t understand either of you, since both are older than common core. Must have been ebonics for both of you.
I’ve just been validated by frank. Given frank’s extensive life experiences, or so he says, I wonder if he understands much of anything at his advanced age.
The quack “tells the truth” according to frank. Spoken like a true tommy tancredo fan. That’s the spirit!
Still there with the stupidity and insults. Not much else, and you have played all those cards for far too long. Go look in the book for something else to astound us with.
I believe you just told me to kiss your xxx in one of your recent comments. Who’s being stupid and insulting? Hypocrite!
If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen frank.
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How is that being stupid or insulting. I did not call you a name, or really tell you what I think of your comments. I will not get down to that level. But you are similar to what I had to wash off my feet, after walking through the barnyard as a youth. Gum boots helped later, as I grew a bit older. I did not like it then, and don’t like it now, even in printed form.
Double standard frank! You just said I was s*** and told me to kiss you xxx.
Have a nice day cowboy.
Also there are a lot of 3 letter words in dictionary. Take your pick.
Could you provide a few examples for us? Go slowly so as not to become too confused.
I’m nearly certain, even Perry doesn’t believe any of this rabble, it’s ‘tongue in cheek’ sarcasm, and he’s laughing to himself.
As the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once stated; “Madam, you have a right to your own opinion, but not to your own facts!” Lies are not even opinions, but opinions that are not factually based are worthless if not outright attempts to lie about the facts. We need to quit believing everything everyone claims or puts up on the Internet as just their worthless opinions and demand they provide the facts and where they came up with their facts or lies. If they do not provide their sources so we can verify their claims then we should assume they are outright lies not just worthless opinions.
You mean like ‘global warming is the biggest threat to our security’?
well, we’re getting down to the point of just shouting out to each other that we are liars. Which means our integrity has gone to crap. Think that happens when people are not held accountable for their lies. It’s all about ethics and we have all kinds of ethic committees that are supposed to address that. Where are they?
Cruz and Trump are the liars in your mind? ‘global warming is the biggest threat to our security’ ‘global warming caused terrorism’ ‘what difference does it make now?’ Just a few to remind you of what idiocy rules on the Democrat side of the aisle.