"I'm a maverick." -- John McCain to Larry King, CNN, October 30th, 2008 "I never considered myself a maverick." -- John McCain to Newsweek, April 3rd, 2010

What I most savor about John McCain's recent statement, "I never considered myself a maverick," is that it one of those passing utterances that show a pure and unspoiled contempt for the listener. There are big lies in this world and small ones; there are half-truths, shades of gray, minor factual fender-benders and spectacular wrecks of truthiness, and then there are those statements that exist only to demonstrate the absolute mastery of the speaker over his own version of reality, one that you, as a listener, are most emphatically not privy to. There is no point to the statement, and no profound advantage in saying it or not saying it. It is not something to be fact checked or tittered at. It is merely there, a dangling, glistening drop of verbal drool from a smiling, unimpeachably honest mouth. It is a blown kiss directed at you, the listener, whether you want it or not. It is a tiny act of intellectual assault; a minor act of thuggery sandwiched between one magazine page and the next; a noble monument erected by the speaker to himself so that the rest of you pissant little tyrants, you dime-store dictators of the lower classes, can look upon his greatest works and know your own place. The most precise translation is something like screw you, listener.

It is not a lie, of course, it is only a, shall we say... evolution of the truth. And that is the genius of the statement: it acknowledges fully that what is true and what is false, in politics -- scratch that, in America -- is completely irrelevant.

We can take him at his word, of course. We can presume that the most narrow interpretation of those six words are indeed, true -- that he never considered himself a maverick, but was perfectly willing to craft an entire campaign, an entire career around the stupid little word. That would mean that Senator John McCain has been a conniving liar all along, a manipulative son of a bitch, in fact, and that with this one statement he intends to come clean, if only for a moment -- but that would be insultingly simplistic, and far too easy. We could presume he is simply a senile old fart -- also a possibility, given recent performances, but equally insulting.



The more accurate answer, of course, is that whether something is "true" or "false" is a game among children, and John McCain, like every other politician able to momentarily capture a camera or a podium, knows full well that you can lie your ass off to all of America and there's not two people in a hundred who will either notice or give a flying damn. It is not just a move for campaigning -- you can govern by it, too. What the hell, you can form an entire movement around the premise that the "truth" is whatever the hell you say it is at one given moment, and that the "truth" may be something entirely opposite tomorrow.

If it means denying past videotape -- please. Only elitists, bastards and misanthropes know how to press rewind.

If it means rewriting textbooks to bend history into a more pleasing pattern -- not a problem. A hundred petty dictatorships in the world, past and present, have paved the way to that particular nirvana already: it hardly even requires effort at this point.

If it means celebrating Confederate history without once mentioning that the intolerable oppression those Confederates were attempting to cast off under the mantle of "states' rights" was the inalienable right to keep other human beings in slavery, to breed and sell them like cattle, and to maintain this state of slavery over lifetimes and generations entirely on basis of parentage and perceived race -- pfft. Only the easily insulted could care.

A collection of housing advocates for the poor might be just what they sound like -- or a secret cabal capable of bending the nation to their will. Is it not arrogant to presume both are equally likely? After all, is not any organization dedicated primarily to the poor a suspect enterprise to begin with?

You can deny anything from climate change to evolution to the existence of garlic bread by simply denying whichever physical laws of nature are most inconvenient or -- better yet -- simply get rid of the transitive properties of mathematics altogether. If A = B, and B = C, than can we truly say that A = C? Or is that, as some of our greatest political minds will assert, the path to communism?

And what of death panels? We can mutter all we like about the plain facts in front of us, that no such things ever were contemplated, that no "panels" anywhere in any legislation were holding the Sword of Damocles over your nana. We can trace the origins of the lie, we can identify the prime liars by name and rank and income bracket, we can even track the lie back to its own corporate sponsorship -- a lie in service of a profit, just another new terrifying brand to be marketed to the masses. But to say any of that is to be a sick and ignorant little fuck, because REAL AMERICANS, in all their uppercased glory, know that true patriotism consists of believing whatever fever dream you are being told, by whoever said it the loudest, and being prepared to believe the exact opposite as well if and when the need arises.



In this context, then, it seems downright mean-spirited to single John McCain out. He is only doing what his constituency requires: reinventing reality into whatever new shape will gain a bare moment of applause. Today he is not a maverick, and never has been; by next week he might be one again. But in all of this it would seem he deserves not our scorn, but our sincere gratitude -- because his, at least, is merely a political lie. A banal, straightforward, screw-you-all lie targeted at nothing more than gaining a few votes from that most fickle of American interest groups, the unadulterated moron. If you are too stupid to remember what happens from one year to the next, John McCain wants your vote. If you do not give a flying damn what comes out of a politician's mouth, John McCain is your man. Give me your gullible, your indifferent, your huddled masses yearning to breathe any horse's fart we can claim is the soft breeze of freedom, and John McCain, like a thousand other politicians and would-be politicians and outright hucksters of twenty other sorts can, for a small price, lead you to the promised land.

A mere campaign pander, no matter how comical -- now that is almost refreshing. John McCain's simple self-denial endangered no lives, and sent no creatures nearer to extinction. It misled his audience not about science, or history, or taxes, or their grandmother's health, or the dark designs of evil census workers. Hell no -- he simply wants your vote, and is gladly willing to pants himself in front of the nation to get it. Compare that to any other lies uttered in the last weeks by the likes of Michele Bachmann, or Sarah Palin, or Newt Gingrich, or insert-your-favorite-political-circus-act here...

Ah, now those are lies. And, as a slight aside, it is rapidly becoming true that if you want to know what is happening in politics, you will almost certainly get more accurate news from a comedy channel than a news one. The reason is simple: comedians still have the plain common sense to be offended when someone is bullshitting them, which is something not one damn host on any Sunday show has the self-respect to manage.

The "news" is not the news, precisely speaking: it is merely the forum by which competing interests can cough up competing versions of reality. You will find no politician shunned on the networks or in the editorial pages because of their own rampant falsehoods. Perhaps it is foolish to expect it, but still... it feels like we should expect it.

It still feels, somehow, that we should hold our national leaders to the same standards we demand of our kindergartners.

In any event, we should celebrate our new decade, for it has solidified the progress of the last. We have now made abject lying into a national political movement. It is no longer merely a tool for the cynical, but a destination, a bona fide political theme park. You can take a bus to it. You can craft a network around it. Most of all, to tell an outright lie is now the American thing to do, proof positive that you are a patriot. There is no statement so false as to be irredeemable, no matter how ugly or how stupid, so long as you wrap a flag around it. Wrap a lie in the flag and it becomes a benediction. Wrap a lie in the flag and it becomes untouchable.



John McCain once campaigned on a bus dubbed the Straight Talk Express. I know this because ancient videotape tells us so, and because some of us, a very few, have retained something called "memory" of those days. We may learn later that it was actually the Grilled Cheese Express -- there is no assurance that the plain facts of one set of months will transfer to another. Where that bus is now I am not sure anyone can tell, but I prefer to imagine that it has been repainted with even more stars and even brighter stripes, sold off and re-stenciled with a truly ripping lie, some grand and nearly epic falsehood in eighteen-inch-high letters.

Maybe it tours the country telling people that their grandmothers are still in danger, or that whittling down to a mere several thousand nuclear weapons in the world would be national suicide, or that you have the God-given right to have companies dump toxins in your drinking water and anyone who says differently is a secret communist. Perhaps it hunts the American heartland looking for citizens who dare to consider homosexuals people. Maybe it travels north to argue that spotted owls cause cancer. Maybe it urgently insists, in large, bold letters, that the government keep its filthy hands off your Medicare.

It hardly matters. There is literally no end to the possibilities -- a movement that prides itself on creative falsehoods can accomplish anything, given a sufficiently gullible population. But but a popular movement that additionally prides itself on its own gullibility, on its own fevered dismissal of anything that smacks too strongly of science, or of logic, or or rationality? A movement that screams "read the bill!", but has never read it, or a politician that screams "you lie!" only to have it demonstrated that they, in fact, are the liar?

Now that has the makings of something truly great.

As for Sen. McCain, we owe him our gratitude. "I never considered myself a maverick" may be a lie, may be the truth, may be both or neither, but at least it was merely the kind of nonsensical horseshit we have always expected of our leaders. It is practically nostalgic, in fact. I dare say it feels as warm as a grandma-knitted sweater.