Politicians are one of the best ways to spread lies

Happy Pi Day! It’s 3/14 or 3.14. The comic strip Frazz asked today whether this is a language gag or a math gag. Sarah Kendzior has said her home state of Missouri is a fascist testing ground. Lindsey Simmons tweeted a thread to explain what is going on. Simmons describes herself as “what happens when you arm a hillbilly with a Harvard Law degree.” What is going on, she said, is “Democracy Manipulation.” The people of Missouri, wrote Simmons, recognize and want fairness. They are putting in 40-60 hours a week and still living paycheck to paycheck. They recognize the injustice of working in the richest country and being too poor to live. And the people in control know the working people are struggling, so they – lie. Citizens were to vote on Medicaid expansion. The GOP said it’s Medicaid expansion or your children’s school funding, with schools already down to 4 days a week. Yes, a lie.

There’s no prohibition against an elected official lying. None. Bankers can’t lie account holders. Doctors can’t lie patients. Lawyers can’t lie to clients. CEOs can’t lie to shareholders. Each of those professions has an ethical duty and obligation to be truthful. But not politicians. Nope. They can—and do—lie with impunity. It’s why politicians themselves are one of the best vehicles for the spreading of falsehoods—about healthcare and school budgets or elections and coups.

In 2018 Missouri voters approved the end to gerrymandering. The GOP introduced an amendment to “fix” what the people had done. And lied about it on the ballot. The lies were so good 2/3 of voters approved the fix. Since the first version of the ballot language was declared by a court to be misleading the state House passed a bill to prohibit courts from challenging their ballot language (no doubt the Senate will soon agree, as will the Gov.).

In Missouri, we don’t just have voter suppression—we have voter oppression. Voter oppression exists where one party has unjust control over the electorate. The type of control that permits manipulative + dishonest ballot language. The type of control that allows sharing lies with a frightened electorate. The type of control that ruins democracy.

They’re working on voter suppression laws. They’re working to change the way appointees to the sate Supreme Court are confirmed. And since these require changes to the state constitution and voter approval, they’re working out their lies. They’re doing that with a three part proposal – two parts are things voters recognize as good and the third is not explained, which does all the damage. Along the way they are working to criminalize protest. The penalty for a third protest arrest is becoming a felon – and unable to vote. And Missouri becomes a one-party state.

Despite all this—people in Missouri still have a hunger for fairness. That’s the one element the autocrats haven’t been able to beat out of us. And it is, indeed, the one thread that can pull us altogether and lift us to safety, far from the autocratic grasp. We must fight for fairness in every single policy.

Why do people keep voting for the GOP? Because they’re lied to. Hunter of Daily Kos reported that since the Dr. Seuss Enterprises decided to stop printing six children’s books that have racist content, and since Fox News produced long rants about the injustice of it all, the Enterprises have been raking in the cash. Sales have quadrupled. Nearly every spot on the Amazon top 20 bestseller list is a Dr. Seuss book. This evening I watched the movie Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound. This is a companion film to Score: A Film Music Documentary, which I saw back in October of 2017. I recommend both of them. The film I saw this evening discusses the whole audio portion of a movie. We get the history, from silents, to the first talkies, and onward. Up through the early 1960s most studios relied on stock sounds and the same ricocheting bullet sound can be heard in several movies. Even through much of the 1970s movie sound was monaural – one speaker behind the screen – even after recorded music had gone stereo. It was Barbra Streisand who insisted A Star is Born be released in stereo. Star Wars in 1977 was another big step in creating a sound world. Apocalypse Now had sounds that moved across the scene, requiring six speakers in the theater. Pixar, with Luxor Jr. (a 90 second film) and Toy Story made big strides in sound for computer generated images. And sound went digital with The Matrix in the 1990s. There are various pieces to the soundscape of a film. There is the sound recorded as the scene is filmed. The dialog is sometimes recorded again to allow distinction from the background and to adjust the emphasis. There are background sounds, such as chanting crowds. Special effects sounds are made up, such as light sabers. Foley sounds are such things as jangling car keys to serve as clanking armor. And ambient sounds such as birds, rain, and traffic. Add in the music and the mixer gets to work. One woman sound editor told of the time a studio director came to her saying her work was taking way too long, that the movie wasn’t about the sound. He wanted to fire her. When she won the Oscar for best sound editing he sent her flowers.