Beware of Bowlegged Politicians

And the horse they rode in on. I suspect most of my readers are tired of anything to do with politics at this moment, just having finished the mid-term election cycle with its endless campaign commercials on TV and billboards and yard signs everywhere. In spite of the fatigue, I am going to rant about the sorry state of political “debate” in this country. Again. (See What's Wrong With Politics in America) I saw an evaluation of an interview of a newly minted New York politician that was so shot full of erroneous statements that I nearly became livid.

If the title of this piece has you stumped, it is drawn from the root meaning of the word “prevarication” which literally means bowed legs. Why does the physical condition of bowed legs serve as a metaphor for lying? Dictionary.com lists synonyms: “divergence from the right course, transgression… duplicity, collusion or a stepping out of line.” They also say it meant “to walk crookedly.” I like to think it may come from the idea that a weak set of legs compares to a weak set of facts on which a false stands.

There is no shortage of those who “walk crookedly” in the realm of politics. Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and Donna Brasile are joined by the newly-minted Democrat representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York. What struck me this time was the utterly ridiculous nature of Ocasio-Cortez’s fabricated facts. The situation was all the more distressing given her college degrees in economics and international relations from Boston University. She is a poster child (age 29) for the working-class-kid-who-wants-to-make-a-difference crowd.

Ocasio-Cortez may also be proof that our higher education system is broken since she obviously has no clue how our economy works despite her degree in economics. If it’s not that, then she is one of the bowlegged politicians. Her story is so appealing, and she is so enthusiastic about her cause that I want her to be genuine. But the only way she can be excused for her stunning misstatements of the facts is to say she is ignorant. That, or she is a liar.

I must pause to say that I am not implying that only women lie or that only Democrats lie. There are plenty of male politicians from both parties who also walk crookedly. However, given the huge Democrat bias in our major news outlets, one supposes that any conservative liar would be treated to days if not weeks of media treatment. You don’t see much of that. True, they tried, “Bush lied; people died.” That charge was proven false when subsequent revelations of fact showed President Bush may have had erroneous intelligence reports, but that he acted truthfully with what he thought was true.

This brings me to the discussion of the essence of truth. Someone has said that perception is reality. This is correct only if one conceives of reality as a personal possession. The reality I possess under this scenario may not be the reality you possess. If one believes in absolute truth, one truth that is true for all, as Christians must, then perception is not reality. By definition, truth is that which comports with reality. That which is true for me must also be true for you. The facts must agree. Experience must prove it. (For more of my take on truth see  “True Lies,” “Liars Figure” and “The Truth about the Truth”)

People like Ocasio-Cortez are apparently disconnected from reality either by choice or by ignorance. The same distinction must have been apparent to Jesus when He reserved His harshest criticism for the hypocrites of His day. (Hypocrisy is a lie with legs; it walks crooked.) He told the Pharisees they were liars born of the father of lies. (John 8:44) Since Jesus was The Truth (John 1:14 and 14:6), lies are especially heinous to Him. Notice that He included liars among the vilest of sinners in one list. (Revelation 22:15)

I’d like to think that I hate lies mostly because I am being conformed into the image of the Truth. I’d also like to think that my fellow-Christians will keep their truth-detectors warmed up as we enter a season of shared power in the US Congress. There will be many more episodes like the shameful one that sparked this rant. As disciples of the One who is Truth, we must take a stand for truth. We must hold our representatives’ feet to the fire. Maybe the heat will un-bow their legs.