To say that a voter cares whether or not a given politician is a liar, is to say that even if the politician is of that voter’s own political party, the voter will reject the politician for being a liar.
In the United States, most voters are either Democratic or Republican; and, for example, Republicans accept George W. Bush (he left office in 2009 with a Republican approval rating of 75%, but a Democratic approval rating of 6%) even though he lied us into invading Iraq, and Democrats accept Barack Obama (his latest approval rating is 90% from Democrats but 11% from Republicans) even though he tried to lie us into invading Syria and was stopped only when British intelligence warned David Cameron and leaked to Seymour Hersh that the 21 August 2013 Syrian sarin attack which Obama was using as a pretext for his planned invasion had been done by the jihadists that Obama was arming, not by Assad as Obama was falsely claiming.
An independent American investigation found exactly he same thing. And Obama knew that if he couldn’t get Britain in on the invasion, the invasion would need to be cancelled. And, as things turned out, he couldn’t get Britain in on it. Cameron didn’t want to become another Tony Blair.
All of the U.S. ‘news’ media hid all of this from the U.S. public, but Americans nonetheless trust U.S. ‘news’ media enough to subscribe to them. And Republicans still trust George W. Bush, and Democrats still trust Barack Obama — despite their proven lies (which U.S. ‘news’ media hide and have hidden: the crucial lies are the ones that the ‘news’ media, of both political Parties, refuse ever to expose; so, the ‘news’ media are locked into continuing their lies about those matters — lies such as the official story about 9/11, which are the government’s lies that the nation’s press still accepts as being truths).
Consequently, Americans actually distrust only foreign news-sources — and only politicians of, and news-reports by media that lie for, the opposite political party from their own. Americans trust domestic ‘news’ sources, and their own political party (though both are full of lies — and both serve the U.S. aristocracy). However, believing in lies produces self-contradictions, which few people even so much as notice, much less comment upon; and this acceptance of self-contradictions enables the public to be, and to remain, deceived.
For example, a poll by Monmouth University during 4-7 August found that 63 % of Americans said they were «tired of hearing about» Hillary Clinton’s emails, and only 34% said «this is something the media should continue to cover».
A month earlier, a poll by Rasmussen, taken on the same day (July 5th) when the FBI announced there would be no prosecution of Clinton’s email operation, found that “37 % of likely U.S. voters agree with the FBI’s decision. But 54 % disagree and believe the FBI should have sought a criminal indictment of Clinton. Ten percent (10%) are undecided». Then, on July 6-7, «The Post-ABC poll found 56 percent disapprove of [FBI Director] Comey’s recommendation against charging Clinton while 35 percent approve». So, clearly, Americans overwhelmingly rejected the FBI’s decision.
In other words, though Americans overwhelmingly (by 54 % to 37 %, or 56 % to 35 %) believed that the FBI was covering up for Clinton, Americans even more overwhelmingly (by 63 % to 34 %) didn’t want there to be any further investigation into the matter. Deep down, most Americans are authoritarian, and are willing to accept a dictatorial government — one in which the top people stand above and beyond the reach of the law; they are immune from the law: not a nation «of laws, not of men»; but a nation «of men, not of laws». That type of nation is a classical aristocracy, now commonly called an «oligarchy,» in order to enable aristocrats to deny that there stillis an aristocracy — to fool the public into believing that they’re being ruled by the public, instead of by an aristocracy (otherwise known as a «dictatorship»).
Furthermore, Rasmussen found extreme partisanship in the public’s beliefs regarding whether Clinton should have been prosecuted: Though 54% of the total public thought the FBI ought to have prosecuted her email operation, only 25 % of Democrats did; but 79% of Republicans did. Democrats overwhelmingly wanted her to be immune from prosecution — which is what the FBI did in her case (held her immune from prosecution for crimes that they had prosecuted and convicted lesser people for). This is truly an aristocracy. Not only George W. Bush stands above the law for his crimes; but so do Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and all the rest of the aristocracy, stand above the law for theirs; and so do the billionaires who financed their political careers.
The only difference is that, whereas Democrats don’t want Democratic politicians to be imprisoned for violating their oaths of office, Republicans don’t want Republican politicians to be imprisoned for violating their oaths of office. Regardless of whether a politician is serving mainly Democratic aristocrats or Republican aristocrats, the ‘public’ official serves the aristocracy, and therefore is above the law, just as are the people that the ‘public’ official is serving. But the reason why it can be so, is that the public are deceived to think that the great conflict is between Democrats and Republicans, when, in fact, it’s between the aristocracy, and the public (regardless of Party).
America used to be a democracy, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt ruled, and to a decreasing extent afterwards, until around 1980, when inequality of wealth soared in America, and the billionaires increasingly took over. But now it’s so much a dictatorship that even the last of the democratic U.S. Presidents, Jimmy Carter, recently blurted out that «it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery».
The American public don’t yet recognize what that means, because their ‘news’ media pretend, even today, there still remains a big Democratic-Republican Party split. Americans thus are now choosing between one criminal gang and another, and still think that they’re choosing ‘their’ government. It still is government over them, but no longer government by them. And they accept it because they’ve been deceived.
For example, even after 15 years, they still haven’t been informed that 9/11 was a joint project between the Saudi royal family and George W. Bush, among others (including, but not limited to, the top level of Al Qaeda).Even after 15 years. In 2007, a Zogby poll found that «Only 4.8 percent of the respondents agreed that members of the U.S. government ‘actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attack.’»
After Obama became President, there has been almost no polling on this matter; but, on 21 March 2010, the Angus Reid polling organization randomly polled 1,007 Americans, and found that the proposition that «The collapse of the World Trade Center was the result of a controlled demolition» was believed by only 15%, and was rejected by 74 %, though it is actually true regarding WTC7, and almost certainly true also for WTC1 and WTC2.
So, one can reasonably wonder how much longer truth, and truthfulness, will continue to remain matters of only partisan interest in the United States, or whether democracy (in which truthfulness rises above partisanship) here will simply never be able to be restored (and politics will therefore continue to be based upon lies, and the public will continue to vote on that fraudulent basis).
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
