I’m no saint. In fact, I’m a seriously flawed human.
But I’ll say this. In over 20 years of school – that’s K through 12, college and law school, not to mention half a dozen gigs as an adjunct law professor – I never cheated or condoned cheating. Not even once. My parents taught me that cheaters are immoral, and cheaters taught me that cheaters are losers.
Which brings me to Joe Biden.
Biden is a serial cheater. He cheated in law school by presenting many pages of a law review article as his own. His professor judged his plagiarism sufficiently serious to deserve an “F.”
Biden was just getting warmed up. From that experience, he failed to learn not to cheat, and even failed to learn not to get caught.
As a politician, he copied a speech from a British politician who spoke of the adversity his ancestors had overcome in the coal mines. Biden’s own ancestors had not worked in the coal mines, but no matter.
He bragged that he graduated law school (not a particularly good one, by the way) in the top half of his class. In point of fact, he’d graduated in the bottom 10%. He also falsely claimed he’d graduated college with three degrees.
He has repeatedly lied that a drunk driver killed his first wife. But the driver’s blood test showed no traces of alcohol or drugs. In fact, his deceased wife was apparently the person at fault.
Back when his handlers allowed him out of the basement in his most recent run for the presidency, Biden copied without attribution numerous proposals and much language from various non-profit organizations on climate change and education.
He lied several times that he’d been arrested in South Africa when visiting Nelson Mandela. He lied and still lies about his record on Iraq.
Yet this lying, cheating and lying about cheating do not disqualify Biden from the Democratic nomination for president. Why not?
It’s because the left sees cheating differently than you and I do, just as they see everything else differently. To us, truth, justice and beauty are important and objective. To the left, they are not.
The fact that great western thinkers like Plato and Socrates believed in absolutes of truth, justice and beauty is not evidence to the left that the left is wrong, but evidence that they’re right. They wouldn’t be caught dead with Plato and Socrates.
“Justice” has consequently been perverted into a vague euphemism for identity politics. They call it “social” justice. Disgruntled leftist constituents want stuff, but specifically not on the condition that it be a natural consequence of their individual actions.
“Beauty” is now an exercise in shock-jock depravity. Think “Piss Christ.”
And “truth” as a fact-based concept has been replaced with “truthiness.” A notion is “truthy” and possesses “truthiness” if it serves a worthy leftist position, regardless of whether it’s fact-based.
The lie that a lunging black man had shouted “hands up, don’t shoot” before cops shot him is deemed truthy. Because it serves the leftist narrative that cops frequently murder black men. Never mind that such a lie may ruin or end the life of a cop. (See, “Justice” supra.)
Confronted with evidence that their truthiness lacks factual basis – that it lacks truth – the left answers with a question: “Whose truth?”
Ironically, these people who contend that facts depend on one’s perspective or demographic also contend that they’re the “party of science.” But give them credit for consistency in their hypocrisy. They say they’re the party of science not because they think it’s true but because it’s truthy in serving their interests.
Notably, a disproportionate number of so-called journalists are leftists. They consciously and sometimes candidly present truthiness over truth.
Back to Biden. Most of us would say cheating is untruthful because it falsely presents another’s work as one’s own.
The left responds, so what? Untruths don’t matter if the un-truther is exuding truthiness. If he serves the left’s political purposes, then he is.
Biden may be a liar, a plagiarist and a cheater (and a lousy one, despite years of practice at his craft) but he has demonstrated a willingness to endorse a majority of leftist tenets and a malleability to conform to the others. Witness his flip-flop on abortion. To the left, he’s sufficiently truthy.
True, his truthiness at the expense of truthfulness turns off unwoke people for whom truth is not just a slogan. The left believes such people are not human, but simple obstacles to be removed on the progressive march to socialism. But first the Dems have to get their votes.
The strategy for getting their votes is, naturally, to be truthy but untrue with them. It might work. But I doubt it.
the Aspen beat 
How basic is this: A liar is one who lies. A thief is one who steals. A bully is one who intimidates to gain pleasure from that intimidation. Now, tell me what is wrong with these statements?
Good morning Glenn,
Again. I must respond to your words.
As usual, succinct, truthful and eye-opening. Pity it will only be considered factual by those who feel similarly about truth and why it is imperative.
I would love to share with others if that is permisable.
Thanks,
Robert J Graff
Feek free to share, Robert.
G
Truthy is a new word for me to use. As for Biden, dementia is obvious. I don’t see how he can lie himself out of it, but maybe Truthy will provide the answer.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
“Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1872)
” ‘Beauty’ is now an exercise in shock-jock depravity.” Just open the pages of any Vogue Magazine published in the last twenty years.
So, it appears that the next presidential election will — more than usually — be a contest as to who can tell the biggest lies about their past along with the most grandiose, incredible promises about what they will accomplish in the future. I may end up writing in the name of somebody who is both rational and truthful. Maybe Dr. Fauci.
Ted, you are really going to write in the name of “Dr. Fauci”? Do you mean the “Dr. Fauci” who told, in an email in 2012, Cheryl Mills (whore of whores) that he loved Hillary “more than ever”? That “Dr. Fauci”?
Because if he loved Hillary more than ever then all ideas about his science, as pronounced recently, being solid and nonpartisan should be questioned, the man being obviously nuts or a flaming lib, or both.
https://canadafreepress.com/article/after-four-years-of-democrat-treachery-i-smell-a-corona-virus-rat
It is apparent to me that Dr. Fauci has been in government far too long. His narrative is far too narrow and his recommended methodology is far too biased to his favored outcome. Those who die WITH Covid aren’t the same as those who die OF Covid unless your prestige and power are enhanced by bigger numbers. My guess is that he favors whoever is in power and which way the wind is blowing.
If only Stephen Colbert can see you applying “his” word (without attribution, no less!) to the feeble “veritasiness” of his own leftist mind!
The underlying issue with “truthiness” is that it removes agency. Rearranged facts (as with Michael Brown) make guilty the innocent and vice versa, so that there is no motivation to be honest in action or truthful in word.
You nailed him.
How do you do it, Glenn? Column after column, great information and analysis, biting, pithy, excellent and clear language?
Aspen Times, go to hell.
The West Point Honor Code — no lie, no cheat, no steal, no tolerate those who do — is an epistemological tool of high utility for evaluating personalities who come into view. If one exhibits any of those behavior, they are fit for shunning. And more usefully, and far more importantly, if one sees those behaviors in oneself, one knows where to apply measures of self-correction.
The first three anathemas are not difficult for most people. The fourth, however, toleration of any of the first three, is difficult for most people.
To ramp up likelihood that citizens shun the likes of Joe Biden, instill in them eagerness for the difficult practice of not tolerating lies, cheating, or stealing altogether, even at the cost of one’s own welfare.
In short: the end justifies the means party.
The left embarrassed by factual shortcomings? Answer: NO.
Analogy: Is the major league batting champ embarrassed by striking out? NO. He knows he’ll have another at bat and another chance for a hit.
Is Adam Schiff embarrassed. NO. He knows he’ll have another at bat and another chance at taking down Trump.
“I’m no saint. In fact, I’m a seriously flawed human.”
Not to put a fine point on it, but, a saint is simply a healthy person. And there are no flawed humans. My momma didn’t raise no idiots and God didn’t make no mistakes.
And a saint’s designation is given them for their loyalty to God, to Truth, Consciousness, and Beauty, not for a moral condition, about which no one knows a thing, least of all God, Who is only Love.
Say what? This sounds like pretty “truthy” theology
I guarantee if I were Trump and they had a debate, I’d be chewing at the bit to catch him in a million lies. though hillary can stay with him with ease.
Your comment makes me wonder how we should classify exaggerations and similar rhetorical flourishes … e.g.. “biggest/best ever.” Generally I find them unserious and entertaining but others apparently find them irritating particularly when they are truthy but not part of the left’s narrative.
I’m not sure that lying is a disqualifier for a politician. It seems like a requisite, or at least something that most voters expect. Biden’s problem is that unlike Bill Clinton, he is an unusually bad liar.
Of all your examples, and I’m previously aware of most of them, the one that nauseates me the most, the one that I consider despicable beyond words, is the lie about the wreck that killed his first wife and son. I’ve read that the man who was driving the truck was haunted and sickened by the accident for the rest of his life. She pulled out in front of him and he had no way of stopping in time. It’s something that would haunt anyone. And THEN, to have Biden, because he’s talking to a group that he wants to ingratiate himself with, alludes to the driver “drinking his lunch” and killing his wife and son. Zero evidence of this! Utter and total lie! I ask myself, what kind of a person could or would stoop to such a low level? Joe Biden apparently. And guess what Joe? It’s a big f…ing deal!
I agree, that’s a really bad lie. Biden defamed a man (after the man died years later) who already felt horrible about an accident that wasn’t his fault (in fact, the guy risked himself in a wild swerve that overturned his truck in trying to dodge Biden’s wife’s car). And Biden did it for a minor political talking point.
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I’m still fond of the one where Hillary Clinton told a colorful story of flying into Bosnia under ground fire and having to run for her life from the plane to the command bunker, ducking a veritable hail of bullets all the way, only to be confronted with a YouTube video of her dismounting the plane and being handed flowers by a schoolgirl.
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