On Lying: Postscript

A clarification for my offended readers of the baby-boomer generation

This morning I posted an essay On Lying in which I reflected on the perennial vice of telling falsehoods instead of the truth. Throughout the essay I took pains to characterize this as a universal human vice, and I alluded to Machiavelli’s 1513 treatise, The Prince, in which he discussed duplicity in politics.

Regarding the current culture of dishonesty that prevails in American politics, I opined that it would probably be easier to return to the reasonable path of restraint and moderation if ALL the crazy, demented, and spectacularly selfish old baby boomers would retire from politics.

After I posted the essay, some of my readers reproached me for picking on baby-boomers who hold political office. For the record, I was not criticizing all baby-boomers, but was using the term to refer to crazy and demented politicians who have been in power for decades. Thus, if you are a baby-boomer and you are not a crazy and demented politician who has been in power for decades, I was not talking about you.

When I wrote the essay, I had in mind the corrupting tendency that occurs when people remain in power for a very long time and fall into the habit of disbursing favors to well-positioned interests instead of governing for the greater good of the country. Indeed, their reliable willingness to disburse favors to powerful “friends” is doubtless one of the primary reasons they have been reelected so many times. After so much time in office, it’s likely they have agreed to conceal or turn a blind eye to so many shady deals that it would be impossible for them to come clean.

An extreme example of this problem are longstanding members of the Cuban Communist Party. It’s hard to imagine how things could ever get better in Cuba as long as these guys are still in power.

In the United States today, I was specifically thinking about Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. However, as one of my readers pointed out, neither is (technically speaking) a baby-boomer (though they grew up in the same era just after World War II). Contrast the character of these baleful seniors with the principled character of Tulsi Gabbard, who couldn't stomach being on Capitol Hill for more than 8 years. It seems to me that our very senior politicians are now fixed in the warped matrix they have erected over the last thirty years. Undoing their matrix requires their retirement.