Eric Cantor: the art of lying in the face of insurmountable evidence to the contrary

As if to affirm that he is three parts liar, and one part U.S. Representative from Virginia’s 7^th District, Eric Cantor recently claimed “No one is advocating a government shutdown” while speaking with National Review Online. What is interesting about his claim is not the outright falsity, it’s the clear dissension that is brewing behind the scenes of the Republican caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.  

By now, it should be clear to anyone who attends to U.S. politics with a modicum of impartiality that Eric Cantor has not only made an art out of lying, he seems to do it with an ease that can only be described as pathological.

It’s been widely reported for some time that a group of so-called conservative legislators in the Republican Party (which is an oxymoronic phrase) is pressuring the GOP leadership in the congress to allow the federal government to “shut down” if President Obama’s health care reform is not repealed. Thus, if “Obamacare” is not overturned, a sizable group of Republicans will vote against a continuing resolution to keep the federal government solvent.

Sensing the importance of this issue to voters across the country, Cantor said “Repealing Obamacare remains the goal, as is doing everything we can to protect people from its harmful effects here and now, like delaying the mandate for people, not just big business.” But Cantor conveniently and unsurprisingly failed to mention that a notable number of members within his own party have seriously suggested holding federal government funding hostage in order to repeal the recent health care reform law.

I can’t think of a time when politics was ever an honest endeavor, but in our own times lying has become a form of truth, a phenomenon so pervasive that fact and fiction, truth and falsehood have become increasingly difficult to tell apart. At the forefront of this revolution is Virginia’s own Eric Cantor.

The reasons for this change are inconsequential insofar as finding the answers probably won’t get us any closer to solving the problem of shifting political discourse back onto a more truth-telling plain. Rather, the people of Virginia and across the country have got to hold their political representatives accountable for the absurd lies that have become the norm (at least among Republican Party representatives).

This doesn’t mean getting nasty or upset with our elected representatives. It means taking peaceful and caring political actions that help bring American politics back to a place where most Americans feel comfortable engaging.

Unfortunately for America, Cantor’s ego and greed don’t only affect his chances of being re-elected, they affect how we as Americans perceive our political system and in turn, ourselves. If someone held up a mirror to our political system right now, do you think you’d like what you see?