on political mendacity

Music: Soma FM's "Drone Zone"

In yesterday's weekly radio address, President Obama reacted to "a range of 'outrageous myths' including that illegal immigrants will be covered, that abortions will be funded by taxpayer dollars, that so-called 'death panels' will be formed to decide who receives treatment, and that reform will lead to a government takeover of health care." Obama's reaction was much more measured than Barney Frank's response to a young woman who suggested the current health care reform plan was a reenactment of the Nazi "Action T4" plan (if you have not seen this, watch):

The woman is apparently a member of Lyndon LaRouche's "political action committee" and was wielding one of their publicity posters featuring Obama with a Hitler-esque moustache. In a number of statements, LaRouche has argued the Obama administrations health care play is "exactly the infamous 'T-4' policy imposed by Adolph Hitler in 1939, for which the Nazi regime was tried and condemned at Nuremberg." I confess I have not read the proposed plan in its entirety---I have classes to research and prep---but I am fairly confident the new plan is not an "exact" copy of Hitler's secret memo, nor is it the same policy as this young woman maintains.

Of course, the "death panel" idea is not limited to conspiracy theorists such as LaRouche; Sarah Palin infamously suggested her "down syndrome baby" might be euthanized because of certain provisions in the plan, extending a critique made by Betsy McCaughey over a decade ago in respect to the Clinton health care plan. Palin withdrew her statement the next day, however, that seems to have done very little to diminish the truth effect of such statements.

As James Fallows confessed last week, these outright mendacious statements seem relatively impervious to fact-checking. In our contemporary world of instantaneous information and dissemination, it is possible to research and correct the record in a matter of minutes. Fallows had assumed, he said, that folks like McCaughey could no longer get away with the shocking statements that derived their truth effect from the shear recency of publicity: immediately such statements would be corrected. He says, however, that he was wrong. Case in point: despite the fact Palin immediately withdrew and corrected her statement about the death panels, other politicians and citizens continued to believe the lie.

Frank is right: attempting to have a conversation with people who believe Obama is evil is akin to having a conversation with a dinner table. Nothing will be set or rearranged. Somehow, something as benign as health care has become an issue as intractable as abortion. This means, then, that the health care overhaul has traversed the relatively simple, fact-based formation of beliefs into the domain of values, deeply held beliefs that are anchored by equally deep affects. Why do people believe in patently false things, even when brute facts are brought to their attention? The answer is because it's really not about simple beliefs, which are easily altered with facts. It's about values and a soul-deep commitment of faith.

For example, sitting at a table with the health care plan in front of her, McCaughey attempts to convince John Stewart the death panel is actually in the plan, flipping through pages frantically, stuttering, and in general appearing flustered. It is painfully obvious there is nothing of the sort in the bill, a point exploited by Stewart in his humorously smug manner. It's not obvious, however, that McCaughey is lying---she really seems to be sincerely committed to her fears. Are Palin, McCaughey, Grassley, and others deliberately spreading mistruths? Or are they actually talking about something else? Is this mendacious rhetoric, in other words, all craft and no conviction?

I think it is a little of column A and a little of column B, which is why Obama's radio denouncement---and all the talking heads you want---cannot completely eliminate the idea that the health care plan will lead to "death panels." Let us look closer at the way in which Palin went "viral":

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

What are the "god" and "devil" terms here? We have "baby," "down syndrome," "death," "bureaucrats," and "evil." On the side of god is an innocent human life, a baby. The baby's innocence is signaled by the qualifier that he has "down syndrome." In the same sentence, we have the idea of "death" and "evil." Where else do we typically see these god and devil terms? Of course, we see them in pro-life discourse: abortion is the murder of innocent human life. Palin evokes the very same terms, and therefore the same value set, that mobilizes the so-called "right" in political contexts. In other words, the false idea of the "death panel" is simply another way of reasserting a pro-life value set. We're talking about abortion, folks, and I don't mean "abortion" as an argument about a medical procedure, I mean anti-abortion as a signifier for a certain kind of subject position that is widely known: Christian, pro-life, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, and so on. No one will ever get rid of the "death panel" topos because it's really not about death panels at all.

When I go home to visit with my parents, I'm often astonished by the political scripts that exit their mouths. We all have our "scripts," me too. What's astonishing about their scripts is that they are all claims with no evidence, and often I cannot even understand what the underlying warrant or reasoning is (at least other than a certain set of values). Having recently picked-up cable television, I've started watching a lot of the so-called news stations and can see where my parents are picking up these "scripts." They are ardent watchers of Fox News, a cable program designed to reinforce a certain form of political subjectivity, a form very easily demonstrable when watching, for example, how they edited Frank's exchange with the LaRouche follower (no mention is made of the fact she compared Obama to Hitler). Frank is right: reasoned discussion is not possible when you are confronting a series of claims, anchored to certain values and feelings, based on a faith in their truth effects.

Finally, there is this: some people literally believe that Deity enfleshed Himself, was born unto a virgin mother, lived as a carpenter, then had himself nailed to a cross so that he could bleed to death and, thereby, atone for all the imperfections of humankind. None of this is based in fact, but the values hitched to this story are so deep-seated that it does not matter.