The history rewrite has always been a favorite tool of liars. This is more than opinion that distorts, it is FACTS that are distorted in order to exaggerate the GOOD by lying about what or how BAD something was. The good news is that many of us already have the skill of sifting through lies because of advertisements. This skill must be applied to our lawmakers.
For instance, some ads promise weight-loss magic and then on the bottom of the ads in small print you read that the claims have not been substantiated in any scientific way. That doesn’t mean it won’t work, it just means that it may or may not work (results atypical) and that it may actually make things worse by negatively impacting your health in some other way.
We don’t have the required disclosures for our government representatives, their freedom to lie is unfettered by the requirement of stating that their claims are unscientific, that good results may mean other side effect bad results.
But WE must apply our good sense in reading advertisements to what’s being pushed on us by politicians. In order to protect ourselves, much as in the case of advertised products trying to sell us something, we must use our skills to separate truth from lies. One big tell used by this administration is the use of the lies about how BAD things are as a means of lying about how much BETTER they can make things. Any statement that starts off with how bad things were as an excuse for little to no progress you can count on as an Administration lie and excuse for little accomplished, or things made worse.
For example, in an economy where we’re limping along where the President arguably has made things worse through the failures of his “fixes,” all we hear is about “THE WORST FINANCIAL CRISIS SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION.” We’ve heard it so many times we don’t even need the piece of propaganda put out by the White House in September 2013 entitled, “The Financial Crisis: Five Years Later,” where you can read about all the great things that have gone on.
Like a person who argues they came from poverty in order to exaggerate their financial success, the Administration has used this tactic from the beginning. We’ve been listening to five years of this junk, and Obamacare is perhaps this lying technique’s greatest success.
The passage of the law was sold by addressing the generally identified “healthcare crisis,” a legitimate crisis that exists in the US. But after the President’s re-election, when the staggered effective dates for many of the more consumer unfriendly provisions of Obamacare started kicking in we finally woke up and realized that just because there was already a crisis didn’t mean that making things worse was OK.
The President’s approval began to drop as his own lies were exposed.
For a moment in time there was a flurry of activity as people realized that not only was the spread from the old BAD to the new GOOD not as great as publicized, but that in many cases the old BAD had been replaced by a new WORSE under Obamacare. This remains true.
Yet, the Administration was able to turn more bad news into a new “success” story with the rollout of enrollment in Obamacare. Suddenly the process of enrollment, rarely the subject of criticism of Obamacare came out front and center when the Healthcare.gov website didn’t work.
From that moment on, ENROLLMENT became the issue and even today we see the Democrats declaring success by comparing how BAD the enrollment recent PAST was to how GOOD enrollment’s current PRESENT is, same style of lying except in this instance the Administration was responsible for creating the BAD and then took credit for fixing its own mistakes.
To date we hear about the SUCCESS of Obamacare based on the ability of individuals to ENROLL in the government entitlement program. It’s a dangerous shift because it encourages people to enroll and forget it when it comes to health insurance and such an approach in this day and age will not only cost us more money, but could cost our health itself.
If you’ve enrolled in Obamacare or any health insurance plan, great, you’ve enrolled. But ENROLLING IN HEALTH INSURANCE is either something you’ve done before, or something that you’re doing to avoid breaking the law…THE NEW LAW CREATED BY OBAMACARE, the individual mandate. Enrollment is only an IMPROVEMENT if HAVING health insurance improves your access to needed medical care and treatment by providing you with a means of helping to PAY for that needed care and treatment (that’s your insurance coverage).
The purpose of Obamacare was to get people insured because theoretically then they’d be able to obtain better healthcare. Again apply the range the BAD to GOOD, Failure to Success continuum. There was an assumption that not having health insurance was an indication of not getting needed health services because those who didn’t have a financial product to help pay for needed healthcare (health insurance) would be less likely to get that care.
Unfortunately, Obamacare is NOT about making it easier and more affordable to obtain needed medical care and treatment. That’s a lie. Obamacare has NOT addressed that problem, because it does not address the problem of being underinsured, having insurance that will not cover the expense of needed medical care and it includes no means of limiting what we’re charged for needed medical care and treatment.
Needed medical care is treatment for illness, not the ability to get a checkup for free. It would be a continued mistake for us to accept the President’s advertisements and assume that just because we’ve enrolled that we have done our job and Obamacare has done its job. The goal is to improve access and affordability for needed medical care and treatment, and this is going to take more than the lie that’s being put forth that enrollment in Obamacare positively affects that ability.
Now that we’re putting on our consumer hats, it’s important to apply these standards to Republicans as well who singlehandedly enabled this President to sell us all he’s sold us through their recent commitment to extremist views that have made them unlikely winners even when the President’s approval is low (remember last election? Approval for the President was at its lowest yet still Republicans lost.)
In short, success is often measured in terms of where you came from to where you are, BUT by creating an artificial environment of where we came from (eg making a website that doesn’t work and then fixing it) or by lying about where we came from (making things worse than they were) and then lying about the progress that has been made, all we’ve got is a lie, and as with any lie, our job is to realize that someone’s trying to convince us of something for their benefit, not ours.
