Jay Kuten: Once the truth is gone, almost anything goes

Harry Frankfurt is an unassuming man. For many years, he earned his daily bread within the cloistered yards of Princeton University, eventually as professor of philosophy. I doubt he would have predicted that his elegant little book On Bullshit (Princeton Univ. Press, 2005) would help define our era.
On Bullshit is a philosophical discussion of the way in which intentional subtle and overt distortions of fact create conditions in which truth (or even the means of finding truth) is itself in doubt. A lie respects the truth.
Frankfurt is only the latest in pointing to distortion of truth and lies as part of life, especially political life. George Orwell's work, especially 1984, was prescient in its warning of the erosion of democratic values possible through systematic twisting of language and meaning. Rupert Murdoch is its current great exponent but there are so many opportunities for its practice, especially among the political class.
Examples abound everywhere. In the US, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona determined to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, an organisation devoted to women's health. He claimed that organisation was 90 per cent involved in abortion. Confronted with data that less than 3 per cent of the organisation's activity was abortion-related, the senator responded that his statement was not intended to be "factual".
Republican presidential aspirant Michele Bachman, seeking to impress New England voters, said that the Founding Fathers of the US were opposed to slavery. As several of them owned slaves, this discrepancy was used to ask her to name one who was so opposed. She named John Quincy Adams. It turns out that Adams was nine years old at the country's founding.
In New Zealand, the right wing, National, and especially its cosy "frenemy" Don Brash, have been endlessly repeating a mantra of distortion. Seizing upon the country's borrowing of $300 million weekly, the rightists claim our debt is unsustainable and compare it to that of Greece. That is the underlying rationale for all their plans to sell off assets, drill in protected national parks, and especially to reduce elements of the welfare state, superannuation, loans to students and early childhood education.
What is faulty about their fear-mongering rationale is the maths. $300 million weekly is $15 billion, a tidy sum no doubt. However, New Zealand's GDP is $200 billion. $15 billion is 7.5 per cent of GDP, which is a sustainable debt by international standards. Greece's debt was 140 per cent of GDP! Now that was something to be alarmed about! What we should be alarmed about are moves by National/Maori to rush to austerity on the backs of the less fortunate and especially our children, rationalised as necessity due to our "dire indebtedness", a concoction of whole cloth.
John Key can carry out those draconian cuts to public services as a pretend pressure on him from his further right, from Brash. Brash speaks of more extreme cutting measures and Key can point to him and say, "Elect me, because, apres moi, le deluge!"
In Brash's June 30 speech to farmers, he repeated the canard about the $300 million weekly borrowings and claimed we were in Greece's position. Brash also repeated the mantra of Education Minister Anne Tolley. As a chorus, they claim repeatedly that funding for early childhood education increased twofold in the past five years but participation increased only 1 per cent. This is used to justify cutting funding by $285 million. What's missing is the question of how those funds were directed. Did it cost more to involve the children of poorer neighbourhoods? Of immigrant families? Was the quality of education improved by the additional funding? Was it used to lower teacher to student ratios to a improve learning? How many children are we talking about when we throw percentages around?
One thing should alarm us. Depriving our kids of the best early learning experiences is a sure way to keep our future economy from being competitive. And isn't competition what capitalism is about?