Don’t you sometimes wonder what our gloriously elected leaders, our pontifical talking heads and all those sundry government officials, political wannabes and honorable this’s and thats actually think when they say what they say?[1]
Jim Carey made a moderately successful movie called Liar, Liar back in 1997 in which for a day he could not lie. Funny concept, lots of cringy moments played for laughs. I’m not sure our democracy could survive even a day like that. It might just be too much…but it would be kind of fun to lift the lid once in a while for a peak.
To be clear, most (okay some) of our Aristos in the world of politics, business and culture are moral and well-intended folks (at least in their own envisioning). The trouble is, they all have a bit more ends justify the means thing going coupled with an anxiety that the folks wouldn’t agree with them if they told the actual truth. So they prevaricate, embellish, embroider, fabricate and deceive, all in a good cause, of course. This is an affliction of both saints and sinners; faith in the common man is a myth.
This makes it hard for us to take what they say at face value and it’s up to us to sort out what they really think. It’s important because what these Aristos actually do is informed by what they think, and not by what they say. Clear? Every day, everywhere, all the time, Machiavellian duplicitous blather is the norm. It’s dangerous when the speaker has agency, has power, the ability to change the life of the folks. “Vote for me and I’ll do what you want to hear me say I’ll do…but, of course I really won’t.”
Maybe we could come up with an app, a truth bubble app, which would float above the people’s heads bloviating on television, telling us what they really meant, spouting inconvenient truths in a Hogarth-ian cartoon sort of way. Let’s peak into some of those truth bubbles.
The recent and ongoing governmental stoppage is a fertile ground for study. Might we discover that the difference between what our gloriously elected representatives are saying and what they actually think might be…material? Duh, yes! Here’s Speaker Johnson: “The CR is an entirely nonpartisan way to end the Democrat Shutdown.” In the bubble: “Dear Lord, please, oh please someone find me a way out of this mess. Could all those vulnerable Republicans just suck it up and go hug a Freedom Caucus member? I wonder if I can keep the House out permanently? I’m not sure it would matter. We don’t get much done anyway, but at least I’d get yelled at and belittled less often.”
Across the aisle, we see Chuck Schumer. “The Trump Shutdown drags on as Republicans refused to negotiate with us for common sense solutions to healthcare.” Just above his left ear floats the bubble, “I need an exit ramp! I know I said every day this goes on gets better for the Democrats, but I’m beginning to suspect it may be one of those pox on both your houses sorts of things and if it is, I’m going to get blamed. Maybe if AOC would go off with the Freedom Caucus to party for the next couple of months and stop staring at me like a food group, I could get out of this mess. I’m sure, that she-devil was the one who planted the whole “Schumer Shutdown” thing in Thune’s head.”
As a resident of Pennsyltucky, let me not forget our senior Senator John Fetterman. Let’s look in on him as he is talking about Israel. In the bubble you can see him saying to himself, “Can I pull off the whole Manchin thing? He made a career out of the Hamlet gig. Hey, Churchill swapped parties twice, and he’s credited with saving the western world. I’m way less mercurial, I sort of look trustworthy; I’m a man of the people and I put on my own socks. Also, I’m getting pretty sick of some of the people in my own caucus.”
Senator Murphy from Connecticut recently said about our Nazi-tatted Democratic candidate in Maine, Graham Platner: Mr. Platner was going through a difficult time and we shouldn’t obsess over that silly SS Totenkopf in the middle of his chest. The bubble? “He’s such a great candidate. A roughhewn white dude who can speak for the working class. We can dance for a week or two. I’m betting this is a one-week wonder. I bet Ted Cruz has a I wish I were at Nuremberg tat on him somewhere.
Our Fed Heads famously enjoy beguiling us with word salads. (Don’t you for a moment believe that the late, unlamented veep candidate invented this form of circumlocution. The Fed mastered it years and years ago.) Recently in Philadelphia, the Chairman said, “Projections should be understood as representative of a range of potential outcomes whose probabilities evolve as new information informs our meetings.” Well, that’s clear. His cartoon balloon? “Hey. I’m just a lawyer. I’m not really sure what’s going on, but I need you all to think I’m sure. You know, the only difference between me and that papal infallibility guy is a set of nifty robes and hats. I am, however, pretty confident that I just didn’t actually say anything all, so the staff will be proud of me today. God, I hate the word transitory.”
We all remember President Obama, right? (If memory has faded, take a gander at his new horrifically expensive presidential library edifice in Chicago and tell me you don’t see Isengard…one might argue that ought to tell you everything you know about the fellow.) Remember when he said, “If you like your doctor…”. Do I really need to tell you what that bubble contained?
How about President Trump and his no retribution speech? “I wonder if that Cardinal Torquemada fellow from the Inquisition is still available. He had really cool stuff, really great stuff, the best actually, for the whole retribution thing. I wonder if we could put a couple of racks and iron maidens in the new ballroom? We’d trim them with gold leaf, of course and they’d look terrific! I really need someone to get me a cheeseburger.”
President Biden famously said, “I’m telling the American people that we’re going to get control over inflation…and prescription drug prices.” His bubble? “…. ….”
Some few folks tell us the unvarnished truth. James Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Bank, recently said, “There’s cockroaches out there.” Damn it, his bubble said the same thing. (And, by the way, I’m afraid he’s right.). This is an example of the old adage that the exception proves the rule.
While we don’t have an app yet, we do have the Press whose job is deciphering the disquisitions of the mighty. So, we can rely on them to suss out the truth, right? Can’t we? How silly. In fact, the Press makes it worse because they’re virtually all apostles of the left or the right (or something else, like, whatever Rand Paul is) and they put their spin on everything. Their version is often no closer to an accurate readout of what our Aristos were thinking when they said what they said in the first place. The mutterings of the Fourth Estate, almost all imbued by fervent commitments to the disparate views of what’s right and wrong, only muddy the waters. Do I believe what Senator Foghorn said, or what my favorite broadcaster said he said, or do I try to figure out for myself what the dude actually meant? It’s hard.
Of course, if you’re in the weeds on an issue, you do have a leg up. Your bullshit meter will go off pretty regularly. The trouble is that no one is in the weeds on everything. Even where you have deep knowledge of something, you (me) almost always have no more knowledge than the average Joe on the thousands of other somethings that are important to life in America. An inch deep and a mile wide might be giving us more credit than we deserve. For instance, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how our healthcare system works. Notwithstanding endless talk from all our elected leaders, the apparatchiki and the commentariat, I still have no idea what’s what. I’m pretty sure though, that no one is telling me the truth.
Could it be this lack of truth telling is all a complicated calculus of code words so that only the Illuminati with their decoder rings knows what their fellow residents of the heights actually plan to do while the rest of us are clueless? Dan Brown…calling Dan Brown!
It’s sad that we have to work so darn hard to figure out what the great and mighty actually think. But we had better do it, because that’s what they’re going to do to us.
We really ought to try hard to see it coming.
[1] As I have begun several recent missives, I reiterate that I’m speaking not in any sense ex officio for any organization with the bad judgment to have me as a member, but in my own capacity and expressing my own lonely views on this topic.