What is it with Republicans and lies? Specifically, what is it with one of the more outspoken religious bigots in Congress – Michele Bachmann? Yes, I am going to focus on Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who has been on a tear lately. Not only is she hypocritically demanding punishment for President Barack Obama while she herself is under investigation by the FBI, but she is reassuring the reality-challenged that an act of God is going to repeal “Obamacare”:
That’s why you saw the House of Representatives pass my bill, the full repeal of Obamacare last week, and that’s why I have renewed confidence that we can see this bill pass in the Senate and I think the President will ultimately be forced to repudiate his own signature piece of legislation because the American people will demand it.
And I think before his second term is over, we’re going to see a miracle before our eyes, I believe God is going to answer our prayers and we’ll be freed from the yoke of Obamacare. I believe that’s going to happen and we saw step one last week with the repeal of Obamacare in the House. We have two more steps. We serve a mighty God and I believe it can happen.
Testify, sister!
Jason Easley wrote here the other day that “House Republicans keep fooling themselves into believing that if they just keep passing bills to repeal Obamacare, someday it will happen” but Bachmann has done them one better, by invoking God.
Is it okay to lie to people who actually want to be lied to? No, it’s not, and I’ll get to that in a moment. For now, focus on the fact that House Republicans have voted 34 times to repeal Obamacare. Thirty-four votes, and still Obamacare remains the law of the land for the simple reason that Democrats are under no obligation to make Republicans feel better about themselves by sharing their delusions. Healthcare is good, not bad. Sane people know this.
It seems Republicans cannot open their mouths without lies spewing out. And these are not minor lies of omission and commission but whoppers. I am talking outright invention of facts.
In fact, the knee-jerk Republican response to any glaring deficiency of fact-content in their claims seems to be to simply make shit up instead and pretend it’s the truth. From their rhetoric, this is the sort of thing you’d expect Godless liberals to do. Being a bunch of atheists, after all, means liberals don’t feel themselves bound by God’s law.
It seems, more and more, that the only weapon remaining to the Republican Party – besides dishonesty that is – is fear of God. Witness the recent claim that God will lay waste to Minnesota cities over the state’s new marriage equality law. Lying to instill fear of God’s wrath is pretty funny when you think about it, given how much God hates lying.
I’m serious. This is a real WTF moment. Lying is forbidden in the Ten Commandments they insist on posting in every public school and government building (Exodus 20:16), leaving you wondering if they’ve ever actually read the list themselves. And in Proverbs we are told that “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord” (12:22) and that “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment” (12:19).
I can only say to this last claim that God – unless God measures “moments” very differently from we humans – had not yet met the Republican Party and Michele Bachmann.
And hey, I realize that the New Testament is passé among Republicans (Gentle Jesus invokes so little fear, you know), but for the record, the prohibition against lying is Old AND New Testament, with Paul telling the Colossians, “Do not lie to each other”(Col 3:9). Gosh, does it get any simpler than that? What’s the story here: Listen to Paul when he says women should shut up and subordinate themselves to men (1 Corinthians 14:34-35), but ignore him when he says “don’t lie”?
So there really is no excuse for all the dishonesty. Sure, the Egyptian monk Shenoute loudly proclaimed in the fifth century that “there is no crime for those who have Christ,” and sure sixteen centuries of conservative Christians have echoed him, but you have to ask yourself, “What was he thinking?”
Sure there are crimes. The Bible is full of them. I’ve listed only a couple of examples above. You might mean, as Shenoute did, that the laws of man do not apply (specifically, that he could burn down the homes of Pagans and loot their belongings whatever the law said) but if, as we are told by the Republicans, our man-made laws derive from the Bible, Shenoute is wrong.
The Bible they insist our kids learn in school helpfully lists the crimes, including as I have shown above, the prohibition against lying, and Republicans, while shoving the Bible and its contents down our throat, ignore everything in it except for, 1) a dubious objection to homosexuality; 2) an invented objection to abortion; and, 3) a nonexistent definition of traditional marriage.
Your first reaction to this ought to be, what, this big book that puts War and Peace to shame, and all you can find in it are three things that are NOT in it? WOW. If the Bible doesn’t say what you want it to say, just pretend it says it anyway. And what, this is the inerrant word of God and God isn’t going to be pissed about you putting words in his mouth?
That’s truly pathetic. It shouldn’t take a Heathen like me to point out that their God very much dislikes their dishonesty and will punish it. If Minnesota’s cities are going down, rest assured, so are Michele Bachmann’s lying tongue and her self-loathing gay husband. I’m talking about pillars of salt-type justice.
Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is known for her crazy utterances. But just once in a while, if she truly believes all that God’s wrath stuff she spews, she might want to stop and think about what’s about to come out of her mouth, because as it says in 1 Timothy, “Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron” (4:2).
Testify again, Michele. I dare ya.
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