It was a sad lesson in the truths that Black people speak, as the video above had made visceral a tradition in African AMerican folk culture of the combative relations between Blacks and the police. From the song "Po Lazarus"
The explosive response to the verdict was not based on the injustice of the act, again, there is a long history of police abuse, wrongful incarceration and even murder of Black people. So an innocent verdict was not new, what was new was the fact this verdict had been delivered in the face of images taken in real time of the assault on Rodney King. What the verdict said to the Black American public was, "You gon believe me, or your lying' eyes." (Richard Pryor) In essence the outright denial via verdict of the guilt of the four LA patrolmen, was an assertion of a lie so gross, "Mr King was in control of the situation," so stunning "The four officers felt threatened" in its audaciousness that it bent the warp and woof of human consciousness. In a moral universe, stars burned out in response, planets fell out of orbit and matter danced an intimate belly rub with anti-matter. The dangerous lessons taught by the trial of the four LA patrolman was that 1) we do not live in a moral universe. The arc of the moral universe? never heard of it! And 2)"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." (Joseph Goebbels).
Mitt Romney is presently attempting to make use of the "Big Lie".
Part of this has to do with the cynical belief (too often rewarded to be ignored) among politicians that enough voting members of their party can suspend or cling to whatever beliefs they need to when the time comes. The mortgage crisis was caused by poor people trying to gin the system, until it was caused by Barney Frank's efforts to put poor people in houses, or until it was caused by Obama's mortgage relief efforts. Romney can say what he wants when he wants and enough of the hard core will vote for him and change their own minds about issues to reflect whatever reality the GOP is pushing that particular day. It's bigger than the Big Lie - it's cognitive dissonance, a fractured media, and hyper individualism all taken to their logical extremes - we all get to manufacture our own reality - facts, history, and the other details of what we used to call reality are all just alternatives in some strange new world.
ReplyDeleteAnd in crucial ways, it started with that trial.
It's hard to use facts or figures to combat the Big Lie. In fact facts and figures, logic weirdly gives the lie credibility as if the lie is a legitimate point worthy of consideration. But what I think is starting to work, which I believe is an underused political weapon . . . humor, mockery, scorn. Pres. Obama's laughter during his ABC interview is really all that needs to be said.
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