Everything True Except the Facts

“Who are you going to believe; me or your lying eyes?”

Coined by Groucho Marx, this line was used to good effect by the late comedian Richard Pryor, in a routine in which his wife has caught him cheating with another woman.

I was reminded of that line when we learned that here in Putnam County 60 jobs were recently “saved or created” by President Obama’s “stimulus” bill. Upon closer examination, however, the number of saved or created jobs actually appears to be closer to 2 (two, deux, 1+1, dos, 3 – 1; you know: 2).

When asked by this paper to comment on the 58 phantom jobs, U.S. Congressman John Hall protested that in addition to those two jobs—which appear to have actually been created not in Putnam County, but in New Paris, Indiana—well, he said there were more like 12 jobs saved or created around Putnam.

If we give the Congressman the benefit of the doubt, 14 jobs, by his inventory, actually resulted from our part of the $787 billion economic stimulus bill—2 in Indiana and 12 here at home. Recall please that the federal government has posted on its official web site that 60 jobs were created or saved here in Putnam County—more than four times the number Congressman Hall tells us have been created or saved.

As we think about this puzzling situation, perhaps we hear a chuckle off in the distance. I’d like to think it’s the ghosts of Richard Pryor and Groucho Marx, hearing that their line is still being used to such good effect, albeit in a slightly different context.

But I think it’s more likely that the chuckles are coming from the politicians in Washington, laughing themselves

silly about just how easy it is to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people: “Hey Bob, just put ‘60’ in Putnam County. How will they ever prove it’s not sixty jobs? They don’t really care anyway.”

And before you know it, county by county in America, those made-up numbers add up to the million or so jobs the Obama administration is claiming credit for having “saved or created.”

During much of the twentieth century, the brilliant British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge was an observer of the world scene, and he saw that people seemed increasingly willing to believe almost anything they were told. He noted that many in the West willingly ignored the millions being slaughtered by Stalin and Mao, and chose instead to believe the endless stream of propaganda— from both the Communist press and its willing dupes in the Western press—that heralded a new world order of peace, plenty, and justice for all.

In his autobiography, Muggeridge related the story of a liberal Westerner traveling in Moscow in the middle of that century, who was representative of the gullible spirit of our age. The Westerner asked a British correspondent if the charges against certain condemned political enemies of the Soviet Union were true. “Yes,” the correspondent told him, “everything was true except the facts.”

Like all journalists worth their salt, Malcolm Muggeridge was something of a clairvoyant. Synthesizing the conditions he observed with his understanding of history and of human nature, Muggeridge anticipated the spirit, not just of the twentieth century, but of our present day. When he heard the story of the gullible tourist in the Soviet Union, who had just been told that everything was true except the facts, Muggeridge said, “It fits, not just the purges and Moscow, but the whole mid-twentieth century scene. Perhaps some astronaut, watching from afar the final incineration of our earth, may care to write it across the stratosphere: Everything true except the facts.”

When Muggeridge wrote those words, the literal incineration of the earth was a very real possibility, given the opposing nuclear arsenals of that day. Today, unless we are willing to stand against it, the incineration will be no less real, but it will not be nuclear incineration—it will be the incineration of truth and of liberty.

The Greek dramatist Aeschylus is credited with saying, “The first casualty of war is truth.” As we consider that sentiment, and as we consider what our lying eyes are telling us about phantom jobs, and as we think about facts that aren’t true, perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that we are indeed at war.

But this war is not with guns and bombs; it is a war of ideas that will determine the shape of the world for us, for our children and for our grandchildren. Indeed, the war of ideas, the battle for truth and liberty has come to Putnam County.

And all of us will take a side, whether we choose to or not.

Clint Sherwood is a longtime resident of Lake Peekskill, and for ten years has been a technology writer and editor. He blogs at clintsherwood.blogspot. com.