Not surprisingly, John Scalzi nails something I’ve been thinking a lot about: dishonesty in political campaigns:
[T]he McCain campaign is the reductio ad absurdum of the GOP strategy that “facts are stupid things†— and that from the simple realpolitik point of view that winning isn’t just the important thing, it’s the only thing, it might be onto something. It’s a campaign that will lie and continue to lie when called on its lies because as far as it can tell it’s being rewarded for doing so.
…
It’s entirely possible that McCain campaign will benefit from a critical mass of people — and not just dyed-in-the-wool, will-vote-Satan-into-office-if-he-wears-a-flag-pin Republicans — who have been primed by years of intentional and structural undermining of the legitimacy of fact, to accept bald-faced lying as just another tactic; people, in other words, who know that they are being lied to, know the lies are being repeated in the face of factual evidence, and know the campaign knows it is lying and plans to continue to do so all the way to the White House… and sees that sort of stance as admirable. Can you blame McCain for taking advantage of this dynamic? Well, quite obviously, you can, and should.
Go read the entire post.