As a Jew, I am especially sensitive to inflammatory lies designed to energize a supporting base that is ignorant of the truth and thirsty for arguments demonizing another group of people. Anti-Semitism is jam-packed with lies of this sort: Blood libels that brought about pogroms and the killings of innocent Jewish men, women and children, such as the Dreyfus affair in France. The fabricated “Elders of Zion” that keeps on circulating in the anti-Semitic Muslim world and beyond, still serves as the basis for the Iranian regime’s key reason for aspiring to wipe Israel off the map; it even tops the contemptible lie concerning the denial of the Holocaust. The Nazis perfected the art of lying. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, has been credited with formalizing the effectiveness of deceit. “If you repeat a lie a thousand times, you start believing it yourself,” he proclaimed. And, “The grander the lie, the more people will believe it,” he concluded.Palestinians along with other Arabs have been spreading blatant lies about Israel, which the world’s left-minded public has been buying, digesting and acting upon. The various flotillas trying to break the “Israeli siege” over Gaza, while refusing to recognize the true facts, are prime examples. The Muhammad al-Dura incident in which Palestinians staged a “killing” of a young boy by the Israeli military proved to be nothing more than a spectacular piece of theater for the world’s naïve TV audiences. And this is why the latest pack of lies broadcasted by Republicans during primetime from a convention in Tampa and in their recent commercials reviles me. First let me say that I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I voted for both red and blue candidates in the past. I judged them by their opinions, intelligence, actions and my expectations of their potential contribution—not their party affiliation. In this election cycle I am inclined to vote for Mitt Romney, mostly because I’d like to have faith in his stronger and more aggressive approach to preventing Iran from going nuclear. I do not, however, support the Republicans’ economic agenda—modeled after former president Herbert Hoover, whose policies ignited and poured more gasoline on the Great Depression—or their extreme “pro-life” stance, which seems to me dangerously like a Christian version of Sharia law. There are other Republican notions which are discouraging to say the least: Their dismissal of the Nobel prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman; their misunderstanding of Macro Economics and the function of the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Ben Bernanke, who saved the world from the greatest economic depression known to mankind; their calls for a reestablishment of the Gold Standard; their scorn of one of the greatest economic minds the world has ever known, Maynard Keynes. The Republican dismissal of global warming, evolution, and science in general is nothing short of terrifying. Regardless of all these turnoffs, the simple fact is that the president of the United States cannot shape the economy on his own. Most domestic legislation cannot be initiated without congressional or judicial approval. Legislation affecting issues such as the economy, the pro-choice/pro-life issue, heath care, and education require bi-partisan support. Should he become the next American president, Romney will find out that his powers are severely constrained when it comes to implementing the Republicans’ agenda on the domestic front. However, when it comes to foreign relations and military campaigns, it is quite a different ball game. In this case, the president assumes far greater independence. This is why I favor Romney.Still, the lies spread and promoted by VP-hopeful, Paul Ryan, together with Romney himself have left me reevaluating who will benefit from my vote in the upcoming election. Demagogue Ryan’s acceptance speech during the Republican convention was nauseating. As was the images of Republican delegates bathing in the deceitfulness that filled the air, clapping and cheering at every falsification dropped from the podium by their newly-crowned Pinocchio prince.Here are some of the most glaring lies from Ryan’s speech and other false claims by the GOP:Claim: “716 billion US dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Barack Obama.” Fact: This is probably the most outrageous and blatant lie. Not only does Ryan’s own plan include the same provisions, but the 716 billion dollars that were “funneled out” are savings that eliminate inefficiencies and will actually prolong the life of Medicare. Claim: “Obama should be faulted for the nation’s credit downgrade in August 2011.”Fact: As has been well documented by the rating agencies who clearly blame the GOP for the downgrade, it was the Republicans who promoted a government default on its debt for the first time in history by refusing to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal. Claim: Romney and his cohorts claim that the Obama administration has waived work requirements included in the 1996 welfare reform law. Fact: Everyone from independent fact-checkers to major newspapers to former president Bill Clinton (who actually signed the law) have counterclaimed that the campaign’s attack is nothing more than a lie. Claim: Obama promised to keep a GM plant that closed down in Ryan’s hometown, Janesville, Wisconsin, open for the next hundred years… It was closed down less than a year later. Fact: Obama never made that promise. What’s more, the plant shut down in December 2008, before Obama even took office. But the part that makes this claim even more despicable is the fact that Obama was the one who saved GM and the rest of the auto industry (according to the GOP, that makes him a socialist)and successfully revived the ailing “Made in the USA” manufacturing industry. Claim: “Obama did exactly nothing on Bowles-Simpson. He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.” Fact: Ryan was the one sabotaging the commission by convincing House Republicans to vote against the plan.Claim: “More debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined.” Fact: This is merely a spin. Obama increased the debt from 10 trillion dollars to 15 trillion (only 50 percent in comparison with predecessor George Bush’s increase of over 100 percent). It was necessary due to the two wars Obama inherited, and the depressed economy (unemployed people and badly performing businesses that do not pay taxes.) Also, Republican-legislated tax loopholes for the rich did little to help the deficit by making the super-rich pay less than 15 percent of their income in income tax. Lies are effective only because most people are ignorant; even those who are aware of the truth are often not sophisticated enough to understand it. It is thus up to the media to do a better job at exposing the liars for who they are and to strongly discourage this mode of campaigning. The writer is currently a talk show host at Paltalk News Network (PNN). He served as an intelligence expert for the Israeli government and was a professor at Northwestern University. He was a VP at NMS Communications, a Bell Laboratories distinguished staff member and manager, and a delegate of the US and Lucent Technologies to UN International Standards body. He is the author of Fundamentals of Voice Quality Engineering in Wireless Networks, and more recently, 72 Virgins. For more information, visit www.aviperry.org.
