Politicians and a Contract With The Devil
By Jackie Muhammad
The American political system, said by many to be the greatest system of government in the world, has a very serious flaw: It is a system built on two of the seven deadly sins of the Bible.
According to the Bible, the Book of Proverbs enumerates seven deadly sins. They are (1) haughty eyes, (2) a lying tongue (3) hands that shed innocent blood, (4) a heart that devises wicked schemes, (5) feet that are quick to rush into evil, (6) a false witness who pours out lies, and (7) a man who stirs up dissension among brothers. According to the Book of Romans (6:23), all sin results in death, unless an act of atonement accompanies reconciliation.
According to Mr. Webster, to lie means to make an untrue statement with the intent to deceive, an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with the intent to deceive. In short, a lie is the willful distortion of the truth.
It is Satan who brought the evil of lying into the world; his native tongue, some say, is lying. Prior to the introduction of Satan into the world, man did not participate in the artful skill of lying. Now lying has become a skill that Satan’s offspring has perfected, and that skill is no more evident than it is in America’s political arena.
President George W. Bush lied about the weapons of mass destruction being hidden in Iraq by Sadam Hussein. That lie led to hundreds of thousands of innocent people losing their lives. Bush’s apologists would say that his intelligence services provided him with false information. False information is the cynical manipulation of the truth. The net result is the same thing—a lie.
Recently Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, and his running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan, addressed the American people and inundated the people with lies and distorted truths. For example:
· Mr. Ryan accused President Barack Obama of closing a General Motors automobile plant in his district in Wisconsin. The future vice-presidential aspirant knowingly lied, because the plant was closed during the Bush administration. It was on a list to be closed in 2008. Mr. Obama had no ability to save the plant that was closed during the Bush administration.
· Further, Mr. Ryan attacked the President and alleged that Mr. Obama took $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare. Ryan never mentioned to his information-challenged audience that his own budget proposal incorporated those same cuts to pay for tax cuts for the rich or a deficit reduction.
· A veteran GOP consultant is quoted in the Capitol Hill Blue on September 2, 2012, as saying that “lying is a way of life with Ryan” and that “The man is, and always has been, a serial liar …. he will be Mitt Romney’s Sarah Palin.”
Romney lied at the recent Republican National Convention when he said he wanted to see the country’s first Black president succeed. Meanwhile, his future running mate had conspired with a cabal of congressional representatives and political operatives to plot the downfall of Mr. Obama on the very night of his inauguration. Robert Draper, the New York Times Magazine writer, correspondent for GQ and author of several other books on politics, details this treacherous and nefarious conspiracy in his recent publication called Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.
Among the conspirators was House Majority leader Eric Cantor. When asked by CNN Money on August 30, to comment on Mr. Ryan’s recent lie concerning Obama and Medicare, Mr. Cantor said, “the assumption was that, um, the, the, ah, again—I probably can’t speak to that in an exact way so I better just not.” Mr. Cantor appeared to be a victim of a malady called word salad, a mixture of random words that, while arranged in phrases that appear to give them meaning, actually carry no significance. James Brown used to call it “Talking loud and saying nothing.”
Senator Rick Santorum lied to the public when he refused to admit that he had said he would not give government money to Black people. His lie caught on videotape, Santorum later said he used the word “blah” people. That lie doesn’t fly because there are no known people as “blah people” on the planet Earth. Maybe NASA’s Mars Rover will “discover” such a people as it probes the Red Planet.
Republicans do not have a monopoly on lying and distorting the truth. Candidate Obama was forced by Hillary Clinton, then his opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, to denounce Minister Farrakhan as being an “anti-Semite,” a lie that has been defeated by those knowledgeable of the truth, yet repeated by the Jewish-controlled media, which operate on the principle that if you repeat a lie often enough, the people will believe it. Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and their surrogates were the first to spread the lie that President Obama was a “stealth” Muslim.
If the Bible condemns lying as one of the principal sins and politicians make lying a staple of their political discourse, then what does that say about those who follow such politicians? Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan consider themselves religious men. Many of the Christian-right are staunch supporters of both men. However, no one on the Christian-right or any other spokesperson among the Christian elite has corrected the anti-Godly behavior of these lying politicians. Jesus admonished his followers to speak the truth, yet the Christian-right speak of their love for Jesus but use the name of Jesus to shield their evil behavior. The Holy Qur’an puts it this way: “Who is more evil than the one who fabricates lies and attributes them to God?”
One of the central messages that Jesus came into the world to deliver was the truth of God and the devil. The reason Jesus got into trouble was that he exposed the truth of the identity of the chief enemies of God.
One of the principal lies circulating in the political arena is the lie of voter fraud or voter irregularity. Voter fraud in America largely does not exist; therefore, voter fraud is not a problem. Those on the political right who have created a false flag issue out of voter fraud are further dividing the nation politically and racially. False flag operations are used as a pretext for war; they serve as a means to justify an attack on another nation on the basis of a lie.
Voter fraud has been used as a pretext for attacking Blacks, the elderly and the poor, who would most likely vote for Mr. Obama.
The Christian-right is one of the biggest supporters of those in the political arena who are promoting the lie of voter fraud. It has one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington. Yet, instead of standing up and speaking out in support of the truth concerning voter suppression, the Christian-right has joined the forces of evil in promoting the lie of voter fraud.
Jesus identified the devil and said the devil is the father of lies. John 8:44 says: “You belong to your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies he speaks his native language, for he is the father of lies.”
When Jesus spoke those words, he was referring to his enemies among the Jewish leadership in the Sanhedrin, the ancient Jewish court system. The Sanhedrin was composed of the politicians of that time. They were seeking to have him killed on the basis of a lie. However, lying has now become an integral part of the American political system—and the companion of all evil doers who are trying to kill a political system that speaks to the greater needs of the majority of the American people.
Donald Trump, the reputed billionaire real estate mogul and gambling casino czar and erstwhile presidential aspirant, constantly lies when he alleges that Mr. Obama is not an American, but a foreigner born in Africa. Other leading Republican political operatives have constantly perpetuated the lie that Obama is a communist who wants to transform America into a European-style socialist state.
The same moral and ethical lapses Jesus accused the Jews of committing are an everyday occurrence among the nation’s leading politicians. If the American political system is to survive, then lying must be removed from the political lexicon and be replaced with Truth. If these politicians are thrust into office on the basis of lies and distortions, then the American people will get exactly what they have voted for—a contract with the devil.
(Jackie Muhammad is a former presidential appointee, member of the Oxford Round Table, educator, youth-trainer and businessman.)