cognitive dissident

Paul Krugman is dismayed at the McCain/Palin campaign's "Blizzard of Lies:"

Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks" when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they're all claims recently made by the McCain campaign -- and they're all out-and-out lies. [...]

I can't think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign's lies in 2000 were artful -- you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.

McCain's "Double-Talk Express" has veered off the honesty highway numerous times, and often seems to spend more time off the road than on it. The media, however, studiously avoid his erratic path, and are barely able to muster an occasional noncommittal remark about the two campaigns' differing views on what constitutes responsible driving habits.

Fuck that.

The media must start calling McCain's lies for what they are: cynical attempts to manipulate an electorate into making this another cult-of-personality election. If they fail to do so, we as citizens must do it for them. As Anonymous Liberal writes:

John McCain is on the verge of doing one of two things: he's either about to implode under the weight of his own lies, or he's on the verge of proving, definitively, that there is no political downside to telling an endless stream of bald-faced lies. Sadly, I'm beginning to suspect the latter. [...]

The most basic function of the political press is to inform the people and to hold politicians accountable. When blatant lying carries no political downside, that means the press is serving as a conduit for disinformation and, by definition, not holding politicians accountable for their statements. And if that's the case, if all that modern news coverage succeeds in doing is amplifying and rewarding dishonestly, then democracy is actually better off without any coverage at all.

This election is a test of the political media in this country. If journalists can't find a way to dissuade the use of flagrant dishonesty as a tactic, they will have failed this country miserably.

Hmm...where have I heard the term "miserable failure" before?

links:
"McCain and Palin's Top 20 Lies, Myths, and Flip-Flops" (AlterNet)
"John McCain's 42 Flip-Flops" (Think Progress)