Lying Is Company Policy

Created
Tue, 08/10/2024 - 01:30
Updated
Tue, 08/10/2024 - 01:30
They will defend disinformation to your death It’s been an article of conservative faith for as long as I can recall that government ought to be run more like a business. On that topic…. A long time ago, in a high school far, far away, a decade before the breakup of Ma Bell, I read a book about corporate rip-offs. It included a tale of a private school bus service in Greensboro or High Point, NC that (IIRC) had a run of burned-out clutches in its fleet of brand new buses. Despite his repeated complaints, the owner kept getting the runaround from the maker’s regional manager who claimed that no other customers had experienced similar problems. This was a lie. The owner had contacted other fleet owners by long distance and letter (remember when this was) and had a file of receipts. Yet the regional manager insisted the breakdowns must have been caused by the service’s drivers. The money quote went something like this: “He was lying to me. I knew he was lying to me. He knew I knew he was lying to me. But he lied anyway, not because he had anything to gain from the lies, but because it was company policy.” As you may have noticed from the political faction that wants our government run more like a business, lying is now company policy. During the vice-presidential debate last week you watched J.D. Vance tell transparent lies and, when called on them by the moderator, double…