Republican Party campaign morality: “There’s no obligation to tell the truth”

I've argued repeatedly here that FGOP (fascist GOP) campaign tactics are completely unconcerned about lying, deceiving, slandering, irrational emotional manipulation (unwarranted fear, rage, hate, bigotry, distrust, etc.) and crackpot motivated reasoning. The only moral principle is winning power and wealth. All means, legal or not, justify the ends. The following is a beautiful example of how utterly irrelevant truth is to FGOP operatives and insiders. The Washington Post writes about comments made by Rudy Giuliani and his partner Marc Mukasey made to FBI agents in 2018:

Rudolph W. Giuliani’s promise of a “big surprise” to help Donald Trump’s election in October 2016 led to Democratic accusations the FBI was feeding him secrets about an investigation of Hillary Clinton.

But a newly obtained transcript shows the former New York mayor told federal agents it was okay to “throw a fake” when campaigning, to which his then-law partner added, “there’s no obligation to tell the truth.”

Giuliani’s private defense of his actions has come to light as he and other Trump lawyers face discipline and possible court sanctions for their unfounded statements surrounding the 2020 election, raising questions about lawyers’ integrity in a democracy.

“In the heat of a political campaign, on television, I’m not saying Rudy necessarily, but everybody embellishes everything,” Mukasey said.

“Oh, you could throw a fake,” added Giuliani — who in addition to serving as mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001 also spent eight years as a federal prosecutor in the city.

“You’re under no obligation to tell the truth,” Mukasey replies, according to the transcript. To which Giuliani repeats, “You could throw a fake.”

An agent then said, “Fake news, right?”

Mukasey replied, “Right.”

There you have it fans of truth in politics. Spewing fake news is OK, because there is no obligation to tell the truth. That summarizes the morality of lying FGOP liars as they lie to the American people in their relentless anti-democratic quest for power and wealth. And, we all know who else this morality applies to in spades, i.e., the ex-president and his lying liar cadre of felons, thugs and crooks.

I know most everyone is aware of allegations like these. It just make sense to show some of the undeniable evidence when it crops up from time to time.

Questions: Is it true that “in the heat of a political campaign .... everybody embellishes everything”? Or is that a Republican lie to deflect from (i) the FGOP's endless stream of whoppers and fake news, and/or (ii) the possibility that FGOP candidates lie significantly more than most Democrats in most campaigns? Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that the allegations that the FGOP and its goons level at others, e.g., “everybody embellishes everything”, is something they do themselves in spades, but almost always sanctimoniously deny it when they are called out on their immoral sleaze?

Rudy's credibility

More vaccine regret stories: the lesson still has not sunk in

The New York Times reports on the situation in unvaccinated Texaslandia, where hospitals are on the verge of being overwhelmed:

Dr. Abhishek Patel, who works in the hospital’s pediatric I.C.U., walked in and out of a room where a 6-month-old and a 2-month-old were battling severe Covid-19 infections and were breathing with the aid of supplemental oxygen. This week alone, he said, two teenagers, who had other underlying health problems, succumbed to the virus.

In a room nearby, Cerena Gonzales, 14, moaned in pain. Last week, she was an excited teenager looking forward to starting her freshman year in high school. On Tuesday, she was surrounded by hospital equipment. She and her younger sister got sick after their parents, Carlos Gonzales, 47, and his wife Elizabeth, 42, began developing Covid symptoms and were taken to the hospital. None of them had been vaccinated, Ms. Gonzales said.

“We hesitated,” Ms. Gonzales said. “We were all a healthy family.”

As soon as she was discharged, Ms. Gonzales, still breathing with the aid of two portable oxygen tanks, rushed to her daughter’s side. She caressed her daughter’s forehead and tried to keep her upbeat. She recalled in tears the harrowing scene days earlier when doctors put her on a speakerphone so that she could hear as her daughter was intubated. “I thought I was going to lose my mind,” Ms. Gonzales said. “I could not be there with her.”

By Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Gonzales said she believed the worst of the crisis was over. She untangled her daughter’s thick black hair from IV tubes and gently encouraged her to drink orange juice.

Several members of her family had been ravaged by the virus, she said, and so she now plans to organize a family excursion to get vaccinated. “There is no reason any parent should go through this,” she said.

So there you have it, rationality fans, lots of irrationality sometimes sprinkled with hints of rational hindsight. The family was healthy so therefore, don't get vaccinated. No reason any parent should go through what they set the family up to go through? Hardly. There was a darned good reason. A knowing choice to not get the family vaccinated. 

Texas governor Greg Abbott continues to stick with his opposition to telling people to get vaccinated. For him, it's a matter of personal freedom, not public health. He also continues to oppose mask mandates and has made it illegal to do so in the state. But also at the same time, he is looking for outside help. As the NYT puts it: "To help manage the surge, Mr. Abbott appealed this week to health care workers outside the state to travel to Texas and help the overloaded hospitals."  

Why on Earth would anyone want to go to Texas to help? Texas can fend for itself and is proud of that tradition of independence and rigid fealty to unfettered freedom, as enshrined in the state meme we all know and love, 

DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS!

The people of the state of Texas voted for Abbott and the fascist Republican Party. They deserve what they asked for, namely incompetent fascist Abbott and the rest of the incompetent, corrupt fascist Texas GOP. Personally, I would not want to mess with Texas. It's doing just fine on its own. Sort of.

Questions: Is it fair to lay most of the blame on Texas voters for the mess, or do elected leaders share some of the responsibility for the suffering, deaths and economic damage the new surge is going to inflict on the state? Whatabout Texans who get infected and leave the state, e.g., and go to Sturgis South Dakota, and spread their germs around in other states and other people? Is it needlessly or morally unacceptably cruel to not much care about the disaster that Texas is going to experience and knowingly asked to experience?

Cleaning the room after a teenager just died from COVID

Children's Hospital of San Antonio, Texas

Speculate…

Three questions:

Q1: If Trump is ever successfully prosecuted for his possible illegalities, and must serve jail/prison time, will all political hell break loose in the U.S.?  IOW, considering Trump’s devoted following, would the Jan 6th insurrection be child’s play, in comparison? 

Q2: If you answered “yes” to Q1 (that there will be a massive and bloody revolt), do you think the judicial powers-that-be know that if they ever DARE to charge Trump with a crime, they will be willingly inviting another insurrection?  They have to be aware of that, right?

Q3: Do you think that Trump feels invincible because he KNOWS that his adoring fans will NEVER stand for his being charged with ANY illegal activity?

 

Speculate.

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Chapter review: God's Strongman

Meadows believed that as a congressman, he was locked in a “spiritual battle” with dark forces, and that prayer took place more frequently in his Capitol Hill office than those of other lawmakers because he understands the nature of the enemy and “the attacks are real.” -- Sarah Posner, Chapter 3, Unholy, commenting on Mark Meadows’ (former chief of staff for the former president) view of America’s unholy situation as revealed in a core evangelical lie that Christians in America are under a severe, sustained secular attack intended to make Christianity illegal or to convert Christians to atheists by force, a/k/a/, the Christian persecution myth

God’s Strongman is chapter 2 of Sarah Posner’s 2020 book Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump. Chapter 2 shows how secular democracy and governance weakened and failed over a period of decades. Now secularism is a fading shadow of what it used to be. White Evangelical Christians (WECs) love it. Most Americans appear to be mostly or completely unaware of what is happening in slow motion.

Chapter 2 describes an incident where the federal government rightfully tried to correct abuses by elite WECs. That effort not only failed, it caved in and deal a major blow to secular government and church-state separation. This incident included the rapacious televangelist Paula White, who later came to be the ex-president’s top spiritual advisor, as oxymoronic as that may sound. Posner writes:

“Like Trump’s businesses, White’s had come under scrutiny, and like Trump, she evaded transparency and accountability. In 2007, Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who was the then ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, launched an inquiry into whether White and five other televangelists .... had abused their tax-exempt status by using donations to their ministries for their personal gain. .... At first Grassley seemed determined to find answers, but some of the six, including White, resisted providing full documentation that would aid the investigation. 

Unlike secular non-profits, churches are not required by law to make their tax returns public, so the finances of these televangelists remain hidden from public view. The public effectively subsidizes them because donations to them are not taxed, and the donor receives a tax deduction. Three years after launching the investigation, Grassley, under pressure from religious rights groups protesting that it was infringing on their religious liberty, shut it down without making any recommendations for greater transparency or accountability.”

The investigation was also hampered by the Senate being unable to talk to staffers, who are routinely required to sign confidentiality agreements. The staffers feared their churches would sue them. 

Senate investigators just gave up in and gently suggested “self-reform” to fix whatever problems there might have been. So the spineless Senate put the Fox in charge of the hen house.

Despite the televangelist’s opacity and refusal to cooperate, Grassley not only caved in, he turned around and actually attacked one of the few means of restraint on tax-subsidized religious operations. He recommended either eliminating or weakening the 1954 Johnson Amendment. That law conditioned non-profit tax exempt status on not using tax-exempt dollars for electioneering. That was the quid pro quo for the privilege of having tax exempt status based on taxpayer generosity to religious organizations. Posner comments on how the ex-president took the initiative a couple of years later in 2015 and 2016:

“Trump would go to make repeal of the Johnson Amendment--which would open churches up to limitless electioneering and the possible flow of unaccountable cash through their coffers-- a centerpiece of his outreach to the Christian right. .... Falwell [Jerry Jr., the president of Liberty University] said Trump spoke to him about ‘how it needed to be repealed, and how it pretty much silenced people of faith because it scares pastors and leaders of non-profit organizations like Liberty University and others from taking a political position because they’re afraid of losing their tax exempt status.’ This characterization was not true; The Johnson Amendment does not prohibit pastors or non-profits from taking positions on political issues, only from  using tax-exempt resources to endorse a candidate in an election. 

Once in office, Trump signed an executive order directing the IRS to stop enforcing the Johnson Amendment. .... Trump’s hard line message was precisely what many white evangelicals had been waiting to hear.”

Posner goes on to detail the deceit and blatant lies the WEC political movement routinely engages in. Both the public and the rank and file are to be deceived and manipulated into giving the Christian elites what they want, including fixing what is broken. 

What do they want? Wealth and power, especially their precious tax-exempt status. 

What is broken and bad in America? Evil things like secularism, feminism, abortion, gender ideology and the “dark movement forcing anti-LGBTQ Christians to accept a radical, fringe set of norms about gender and sexuality, in violation of their religious freedom.” 

That most Americans support the LGBTQ community and rights makes no difference. Also of no concern is that allowing the LGBTQ community to have civil rights does not amount to the severe persecution of and direct threats to the loving, innocent Christians that the WEC movement constantly complains bitterly of. WEC lies and deceits are shameless, endless, blatant and undeniable.  

Questions: 

1. Is it fair or even democratic to allow religious (and/or political) groups to enjoy the privilege of tax-exempt status and use of tax-free money to support candidates and campaigns, while most everyone else has to pay their taxes?  

2. Annual tax exemption benefits for religion in America is worth tens of billions annually, but is it worth it, especially in view of the kind of bigoted, anti-democratic, anti-civil liberties politics the WEC movement fights hard and dirty for?

3. Should it be legal for a president to tell a federal agency to stop enforcing a valid law, e.g., the Johnson Amendment?