Liars and Lying

Tomasito Dumboozled. (Tanya Photo, 2009)

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Spin

Political lies are now called spin—which makes them not lies but politically correct instruments of information. (Politically correct is another new phrase which means a lie which is substituted for a somewhat awkward truth.)

The prevalence of spin in political announcements in these United States has reached epic proportions—as they say—with the effect that nobody except a real fool believes what the government says anymore.

This is a bit like it was a few years ago when I was living in Ecuador—a much simpler and more direct land. I was slowly puzzling out a Quito newspaper with my limited Spanish in a cafe one morning when a native stopped to sip a coffee next to me. I remarked to him that, according to the newspaper things were certainly looking up in Ecuador. He laughed and said that nothing in the newspaper was true—it was all propaganda designed to keep the population dumboozled.

Tomasito, 2009

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