What is a Lie?

When I began to really pay attention to politics, I was surprised by how much lying was going back and forth. Or at least they appeared to be lies in my eyes.

However, apparently lies are assessed and treated differently in politics. Is "stretching the truth" a lie? Seemingly not so in politics, such as when Sarah Palin claims she sold a jet on Ebay. It actually never sold while it was on Ebay. Is quoting something out of context a lie? Apparently not.

This isn't even the biggest problem. There are also real, indisputable classic lies out there too. For example, the spam e-mails about Obama being a muslim. This is an absolute lie, yet many people in America still believe it. McCain claims Obama will raise taxes for everybody, and he will reduce them for everybody. These are both lies. Obama "plans" to drop taxes for the middle class, and only raise them among the rich. McCain "plans" to renew and possibly extend the "Bush tax cuts" which only apply to the wealthy.

But how do we respond to these lies? Dedicated sources will often dig up the truth for us, but must we rely on this? And what about those of us who don't research enough to be able to filter through the lies?

It seems in politics, you can lie about nearly anything you want. There are apparently almost no negative reprocussions. While a dedicated news network may debunk your lie, others may support it. If you say the lie in a highly televised way (like a debate or a campaign ad) the odds are good that the lie will reach so many people that there is a very low probability that all of those people will learn that the statement was a lie.

For example if I said that Obama was actually Indian, not African American during a campaign commercial, I may get 10 million viewers who see that. Now lets assume half of them are already dedicated Obama supporters and know better, but I still told a lie that 5 million people had no reason to doubt. The next day the ad is a main topic on CNN and MSNBC, and they both debunk the lie. However, not everyone in the US who watches primetime standard channels (where an ad is likely) also watch 24 hour news networks. Lets be generous and say 3 million people who would have believed the lie see it debunked. That still leaves 2 million people who believe a lie.

But what can we do about it? I think alot of people just check it off as one of those annoying things about politics, and if both sides do it then who really cares? The reason it is important is because we tend to hold our elected officials up to a higher moral standard than usual. Just ask Bill Clinton about that. If we allow them to use dirty and immoral tricks to get elected, and just pass that off as a "political standard," what does that say about us?

If we truely believed that lies were a regular part of politics, why would we ever believe anything that came out of a candidate's mouth? That is why it is so important that candidates are truthful, but just as important that we research for ourselves everything they say.