These Truths

the ones I'm about to list for you are supposedly self-evident. That's the way the Republican propaganda mill that's been churning out the same lies over and over for years on end now treats them. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Business does everything better than the government. And by extension, business people, even if they are buffoons like Herman Cain and Donald Trump, will naturally be better at running the government than a politician, lawyer, or dishwasher. Really? None of our greatest presidents--Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, TR--were businessmen. In fact, if you give me a minute, I might be able to think of a businessman president who rose higher than mediocre . . . hang on. I'll think of somebody . . .
2. Rich people are "job creators." Sheerest poppycock. This is nothing more than the tired, old discredited "trickle down" theory in new clothes. Give the rich more money, and eventually some of it will fall on the heads of the rest of us. Mere accumulations of money don't create jobs. What really creates jobs is great big bunches of people buying things. Rich people don't create jobs; they spend some of their sums of money and sock the rest away in safe investments.
3. Regulations kill jobs. Yeah, right. The lie is that regulations are so onerous and costly that businesses spend a lot of money that would be used to hire people. But this is nonsense. This country's experience with deregulation has shown over and over that in a deregulated environment businesses tend to consolidate into smaller numbers

You can probably think of others such as, free trade is always to be desired and criticizing the greedy rich is inciting class warfare. Equally as much bullshit as the other propositions. There is a real danger, of course, that constant repetition of these falsehoods will magically make them true at a certain point. I'm afraid we may have already reached that point. Not all of us, certainly, but a goodly number of people who are inclined to believe anything that drips off the lips of a Republican or somebody with lots of money. These things are believed because people desperately want them to be true. Because if these "truths" are not true, then the American system and the accompanying American dream--that part of it that says anyone in this "land of opportunity" can get filthy rich--are phonies also.

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