Chicanery, The Art Of Trickery, Deception, And A Silver Tongue - The Inimitable American Ethos

A lot has been made these days about 'the truth', those who claim to have it, and attacks on those who don't. Of course there is no such thing as truth. Everything in discourse, debate, polemics, scholarship, and science is up for discussion.  Received wisdom, settled science, and moral certitude are diaphanous fictions.  Only those who have short memories or a revisionist view of history conclude that there are such things as absolutes. 

Yet, everyone tries to pin the truth down, and the most skilled are masters at intellectual legerdemain.  Anthony Fauci, former COVID czar, claimed that the virus was on every unscrubbed surface, in indoor and outdoor air, both aerosol and airborne, rampant in children and the healthy, a scourge of Black Death proportions, the end of days. 

 

Of course he had to retract each and every one of his truths, and backpedaled on obsessive, industrial strength cleansers, thousand dollar air purifiers, the six-feet rule, children as potent vectors, and the death rate itself.  

When all was said and done, after billions of dollars in economic productivity were lost and millions more wasted on panicked protections, shutdowns, and closures; after legions of schoolchildren were left uneducated, or isolated in masked, protected gulags; and after the whole of American society had become a Stasi, Sevak culture of j'accuse informants, St. Fauci said, 'Oops', and was not heard from again. 

'Science is an evolving discipline', he had said, covering his tracks. Since we are not sure of vectors, transmission rates, contamination sources, and viral dynamics, we have to cover all bases.  Better safe than sorry, regardless of the low risk and significant consequences.

From the very beginning it was clear that the highest rates of mortality were among immune compromised populations, the vast majority being older Americans. Focusing on that group, isolating it, quarantining it, limiting its access to the general population would have been the normal, traditional epidemiological response 

But no, Fauci and the CDC took the HIV/AIDS 'It's Everyone's Disease', ignored classic scientific procedure, and said, 'Fuck it, close the country down'. 

 

It is an absolute truth that slavery is an inhuman, immoral, universally mortal sin - despite the fact that it, along with prostitution, is the most evident, universal, and persistent institution in human society.  Aristotle, Plato, and Sophocles had slaves.  Roman emperors, educators, and generals had slaves.  The Persians, Chinese, Guptas, and the great Mongol-Turkic armies of Genghis Khan had slaves.  Africa was rife with black-on-black slavery before the Europeans showed an interest. Captured enemies were enslaved, bartered and sold. 

How can an institution with a three millennia history be so absolutely and categorically named as humanity's worst sin?  The end of slavery did not come about because there was a sudden moral epiphany, but a gradual philosophical and scientific evolution.  Locke, Paine, and Thoreau began to explore the rights of man, inherent, endowed civil rights.  

The Enlightenment (1688-1789) was a result of a growing reliance and trust in rationality and reason and the legitimate questioning of assumed principles. Out of this came dramatic social change, illustrated by the French Revolution which asserted the rights of all men and the corruption of the monarchy. The rights of African slaves were included in the philosophical cadre, and slavery was challenged and then discontinued. 

 

Religions have claimed absolute truth since their beginnings.  Islam says unequivocally and absolutely that Mohammed was the last prophet, and by implication Islam is the only valid religion.  Such absolutism has fueled a hegemonic, dangerous expansionism.

Christianity, the world's other great evangelical religion has been responsible for millions of deaths, thanks to its firm, unshakeable, and millennial belief in its truths.  

As the late critic Christopher Hitchens has noted, isn't it strange that your birth place determines your religion?  If you're born in Ireland you're Catholic, but borne in Delhi a Hindu.  What does that randomness say about religious absolutism and truth?

Kurosawa, Browning, and Durrell among other artists have presented the impossibility of fact. Ten individuals observing the same event will describe it in different ways.  Eye-witness accounts are worth nothing.  Human perception at best is a fictional, emotionally-driven, predetermined affair. 

Politics is nothing more than human perception, accident of birth and upbringing, geographics, and thousands of exogenous factors combined.  We cannot help our political convictions, carved out and crafted by years of early experience and conditioning.  There is no truth or higher value to progressivism even though its proponents say that it of a higher order than any other system of governance. 

It was rock-ribbed conservatism, a profound belief in individualism, free markets, initiative, and personal ambition which built America and still is at the basis for the country's prosperity.  Progressivism came only later as a natural confrontational episode - it made political sense to attack those men who profited from their enterprise and take advantage of the growing labor market. 

Given the nature of politics - fevered, predictable, emotional adherence to self-serving ideas, it is no surprise that politicians have become masters at chicanery.  If there is no truth in politics - and make no bones about it, politicians are in the game not because of principle but financial reward - than playing fast and loose with what is fabled to be the truth is part of the trickery. 

The American Left claims that Donald Trump is a neo-Hitler, a man of profound racial hatred, totalitarian instincts, and arrogant self-promotion, and millions of Americans have bought the lie, the prevarication and the bald deception.   When the progressive Left has nothing in its policy chest to counter rational conservativism, then why not keep swinging? Trump hatred is now endemic on the Coasts, it has become received wisdom, and absolute truth. 

 

How is it that a country of supposedly intelligent people can have fallen for such inflamed, irresponsible rhetoric?  How is it that so many have swallowed the progressive cant hook, line, and sinker?

Alexander Hamilton would not be surprised, for back in the early days of the Republic, he argued with populist-leaning Thomas Jefferson and warned about the imbecility of the masses.  At least some buffer, some intermediary between them and settled policy had to be established, and so the Senate was created.  Cold comfort, of course, since it has shown to be as insanely political as the Lower House. 

More importantly snake oil salesman, hucksters, con artists, shysters, tricksters, and card sharks have always been the heart and soul of America - the country's standard, the ethos, the expression of aggressive, manipulative free enterprise.  Let the buyer beware taken to its limit.

Hollywood, soap operas, Las Vegas showgirls, vaudeville, the Borscht Belt, Madison Avenue are all part of this same ethos - there is no such thing as settled fact, and thank God for it.  Savvy, canny showmen take advantage of gullibility, credulousness, and naivete every day. 

Donald Trump has raised the issue to the fore by calling his media critics 'fake news'.  Of course they are, and so are his media claques.  No one buys newspapers for truth, but for entertainment and for conviction.  No one watches MSNBC for objective reporting but to confirm their political prejudices.  They, CNN, and Fox News are in the chicanery business, oops...the entertainment business, and entertainment in these days of contention, diversity, and identity means bellowing untruths. These media outlets are good at it. They are good Americans. 

  

We all would be far better off to get off this truth wagon, to pull up on the reins, and go with the flow.  Nothing is as it seems, there is no absolute truth anywhere, so back off from the hostility, anger, and hatred.  Idealists call for a more peaceful world, but look only to secular, temporal solutions - the United Nations, God forbid - when the real solution lies in philosophical sensibility.  

Of course getting a progressive to accept Donald Trump as a social phenomenon only, a product of socio-economic, cultural, demographic, and historical factors, is whistlin' Dixie.  To hate him feels good, and it's what Americans are here for.