CommentsTHE VIEW FROM HERE - The reason that the Trump’s habitual lying gets so much mileage is the same reason that the Dem’s lies get so much mileage.
We are a nation that wants to be lied to. Our courts are also infested with liars; call them attorneys, witnesses or judges, they are liars. People will fight to the death to protect their lies. The entire January 6 insurrection was based on lies and the subsequent Senate impeachment trial was based on the big lie that Dems could not call witnesses. Some GOPers now claim that the January 6th insurrectionists were patriots trying to save the nation. Really, by hunting down Vice President Pence so that they could lynch him? The Dems deliberately prevented testimony from the insurrectionists that Trump had incited them in their violent treasonous attack on the Capitol.
The Trumpists believe every absurd lie from Trump and his follow travelers, while the Dem loyalists believe every lie from Pelosi and treat her like a saint just as Trumpists adore the mentally ill buffoon. As reported previously, Pelosi has made certain that there has never been enough evidence presented on which to convict Trump. Her personal power rests upon fundraising, and the threat of Trump is the best funding raising tool ever.
There Is No Need for Anyone to Believe Trump or Pelosi
The fervent belief in lies may be genetic. FAITH has always trumped facts and logic. Maybe, we should say FAITH has always Pelosied facts and logic. In the June 21, 2018 issue of CityWatch, The Dangers of Dichotomy: The Saved vs. The Damned, we wrote about this phenomenon. When people get the absurd notion in their heads that their group alone knows the TRUTH, then facts and logic go out the window. California Chief Justice Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye believes that it is okay for judges to exclude Jews from court and then disbar attorneys who object to the de jure bigotry. Maybe, her judicial prejudice is limited to “troublemaker Jews who refused Jesus Christ,” but I suspect that bigotry accounts for the high rate of incarceration of Blacks and Hispanics.
Psychopaths’ Role in Lies and Deceit
While FAITH plays a major role to separate people into warring factions, it is not the only mechanism. Some people are psychopaths and they have no real faith to believe in anything except the motto: “What is mine is mine ,and what is yours is mine.” The Los Angeles developers who destroyed tens of thousands of rent controlled apartments (RSOs) evicting the poorest of the poor to suffer and die on the streets are not people of FAITH. They simply did not care who lived or died as long as they could make a few extra bucks. The value of market rate apartments is greater than RSO units where the rents are artificially low, although as soon as a unit is vacated, it rents for the prevailing market rate.
Developers follow the economic principle to Buy Low and Sell High. The developers bought the cheapest property and then constructed high priced projects. Also, people in RSO’s units tend to be elderly, disabled, unsophisticated, and often undocumented. Thus, it was easy to frighten them to move, whereas trying that seize a building with middle class people will cause them to call their attorneys.
One purpose of government is to protect people from economic vultures, but in Los Angeles, the mayor and city council enabled the developers to victimize the poor. The mayors, the city councilmembers, the courts and the developers saw laws such as the Ellis Act as something to be ignored. Interestingly the only councilmember who finally started insisting on the adherence to the Ellis Act to protect poor tenants was Councilmember Jose Huizar, and he’s the councilmember whom the FBI chose to investigate.
Is Anyone Dumb Enough to Believe that Lack of Construction Caused The Homeless Crisis?
The only people who believe this Big Lie want to be lied to. It lacks a scintilla of evidence or logic. Los Angeles is losing population and it has between 93,000 and 115,000 vacant units. Pre Pandemic Los Angeles city, had about 36,000 homeless people. Even if every homeless person had their own unit, LA would still have a glut of vacant apartments. Even with zero new construction, LA’s population decline means the number of vacancies will increase.
While all large cities have had homeless people, the idea that people become homeless due to lack of construction is nonsensical. People who have an apartment do not become homeless because new apartments are not being constructed, especially when new apartments are constantly being built. Because construction has been roaring ahead, no rational person can believe that lack of construction caused the homeless crisis. But, people are not rational. Most people want some lie which makes them feel good.
The City and Pravda West (LA Times) Copy 1930's German Propaganda
To the predators, homelessness is not due to the vultures’s destroying poor people’s homes, but the homeless are to blame. They are portrayed as criminals, drug addicts, shiftless, unemployed, mentally ill. One absurd lie is that they are unwilling to accept shelter. “Shelter” can mean living in a crowded facility where the beds look quite similar to what we see in LA County jail – rows of bunk beds with no privacy. The sites were the most homeless Covid deaths occurred. Or, the shelters have strict rules which would make a medieval convent look liberal in comparison. Now, people propose cute Tiny Homes, where a homeless person gets 64 sq ft. As the homeless know, as soon as they do not watch their few belongings, the city will come along and throw them away.
Perhaps the city’s most blatant lie revolves around the trash in and about homeless encampments. Garcetti made certain that the homeless encampments had no trash services or sanitary faclities. How long would R-1 neighborhoods be clean and neat if none of the trash were picked up for a month, for two months, for three months? How about for a year?
The Homeless Crisis was manufactured in order to make the developers wealthy and to keep the campaign donations, both legal and illegal, flowing to the politicos. The public believes the lies because it wants lies. If they admitted the truth, then they might feel compelled to stop the corruption.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch. You may email him at [email protected])
