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There’s an old adage about farting:  He who smelt it dealt it.  Basically, for those that are new to the program means the person that cuts the cheese tries to deflect the blame by acting shocked at the sudden aromatic shift in the air.  You blame the other person.  Dogs in the room are convenient targets for blame since they can’t speak up and defend themselves.

It would be great if this type of treachery only existed in the all too common event of some poor schmuck needing to release some gas.  Sadly, this strategy gets employed throughout our culture and is especially prevalent in the political realms.  If you want to tell a lie, you accuse your opponent of being a liar first.  It actually works.  What you do is you call your opponent a liar first.  Then you proceed to tell your own lie(s).  The curious thing about the human psyche is that when the lie gets revealed, a percentage of people will associate the dishonesty with your opponent even though you were the one that told the lie.  You can even prop yourself up as a victim even though you are the wrongdoer.

This is particularly common in politics.  There’s been a long tradition of selective truth.  You analyze the facts and you cherry pick the facts that enhance your position while skillfully omitting the facts that may be damning to your position.  This is cunning and doesn’t qualify as lying.  However, people get tired of being manipulated.  You have the cover of saying that you didn’t lie.

Somewhere along the line, some people decided that rather than simply stretch the truth, we can just flat out lie.  If we get called out on our lie, we’ll just simply say that we never said it.  We’ll request unlimited devotion from our followers.  Don’t believe what you see and hear but rather believe only what I tell you.  Apparently some people fall for this con.

As for me, I trust my own eyes and ears.  I can be sitting at my desk and I’ll hear what appear to be droplets of rain pattering off the sidewalk and the window right in front of me.  I’ll hear thunder in the background.  I’ll look out the window and I’ll see something suspiciously close to raindrops falling from the sky.  My first instinct will be to draw the conclusion that it’s raining.

Now a politician will come along and tell me that it’s not raining.  I suppose there is a remote chance that someone has a giant machine in the sky and is creating fake rain.  It happens in the movies all the time.  Of course, that is unlikely.  If I see and hear and even smell the rain, it more than likely is raining.  Why would I listen to a politician tell me it’s a sunny day?  I may want it to be a sunny day but I know it isn’t true.

So I’ll watch the raindrops falling from the sky and I’ll hear a politician tell me that it’s fake news.  Again let’s revert back to that earlier pearl of wisdom:  He who smelt it dealt it.  Let’s employ a little common sense for once.  The person screaming fake news the loudest is probably the person spewing the most fake news.  This is Basic Subterfuge 101.  Come on, people.  You aren’t required to be a brainless drone.  You are allowed to employ critical thinking and common sense to draw your own conclusion.  Chances are, if you spend too much time telling me something else is fake news, it’s really because you want to sell me your own bullshit fake news.