Are these people so comfortable with lying whenever it suits their self interest that they can’t tell the difference anymore between honesty and dishonesty? Are they so arrogant that they know the difference but think they can say or do whatever serves their needs as long as they don’t get caught? What’s going on with these people?
On March 17 in Washington DC Hillary Clinton gave a public speech in which she talked about how she and her daughter had to run for cover when they came under sniper fire after landing at the airport in Tuzla Bosnia in 1996. As is well known by now, nothing remotely like the story Clinton told actually happened. The news media jumped all over her story producing reports from other people who were there along with film of the event. Clinton’s story was a complete fabrication.
At the time I thought you would expect the wife of Bill I-did-not-have-sex-with-that-woman Clinton to be the last politician on earth who would think it was a good idea to tell blatant lies in an attempt to bolster her political ambitions. The story she told was striking, dramatic and easily shown to be false. What was she thinking?
Now along comes Bill Clinton, ex-President of the United States, Hillary’s husband, and the man who left cum stains on Monica Lewinsky’s dress while insisting he never had sex with her. As reported in the Washington Post on Saturday April 12, Bill Clinton said the following while he was campaigning for Hillary in Indiana.
There was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995.
The Post went on to point out just how false this statement is. Hillary didn’t tell the sniper-fire lie once, she told it several times in several speeches. While there may have been times when she told the made-up story late at night, the speech she gave which drew the media’s attention to her fabrication was given in the middle of the morning. Neither Hillary Clinton nor her campaign organization immediately apologized for getting caught telling a fabricated story. At first they refused to answer any questions about it and then insisted her story was true for a week after the lie was exposed. Hillary didn’t go to Bosnia in 1995 when war was raging in the country, she went in 1996 when the situation was much more peaceful.
One simple sentence from Bill Clinton that turns out to be one long string of pure unadulterated horseshit. He got his wife’s name right and he had the right country. Everything else he said was false. One of the most striking things about Clinton’s statement is that he could pack so much untruth into a single sentence.
Do these people never learn? Bill Clinton is hardly the first politician who used his position of power to get laid but he is the only President who suffered impeachment proceedings because of his continued lies about his tawdry sexual activities. You would think that on the basis of their recent history he and his wife would have at least figured out that telling lies that are easily shown to be lies is not such a good idea if you’re running for public office. You would think that Bill and Hillary Clinton, of all people, would be especially careful to make sure that what they say is true. Apparently, not.
You listen to the two of them, “sniper fire!”, “I did not have sex with . . .”, “one time late at night when she was exhausted”, and you ask yourself “how stupid can people be?” But we know Bill and Hillary Clinton aren’t stupid; no matter how dumb it looks, stupidity can’t be the answer.
In fact, maybe they tell these lies because they’re not stupid. Consider this. Driving a car is extremely dangerous. There are about 43,000 traffic fatalities a year in the US. That’s just under 118 per day or one every 12 minutes 15 seconds, 24 / 7 – 365 days a year. And yet people still drive all the time. Why? Because the number of car trips that end in death is a very small percentage of the number of car trips overall. People drive because their experience driving tells them they have a very small chance of dying in a traffic accident. Now, suppose lying was as common in your life as driving. You lie all the time about anything and everything whenever it’s convenient for you to do so. You’ve been doing this for years and you rarely get caught. When you get caught you lie some more and, more often than not, you get away with it. Maybe the Clintons tell lies for the same reason the rest of us drive cars. We know bad things can result from what we do but they happen so infrequently that we keep on doing it.
If this is what’s going on, you have to wonder. What else are Bill and Hillary Clinton lying about?
