Former Vice President Dick Cheney is back and better than ever! He’s come out of retirement to star in a mini movie for his daughter, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney. She ran a campaign ad running for reelection as Wyoming’s sole member of the US House of Representatives. She went on to lose despite the ad. With his trademark scowl, Dick Cheney gritted his teeth, looked the camera dead in the eye, and criticized Donald Trump as the “greatest threat to our republic” in the nation’s 246-year history. He went on to call Trump a coward, asserting that a “real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters.” I had to do a double take. Time out! Wait a minute! Flag on the play! Did Liz really not see this almost comic display of irony and sheer hypocrisy when she ran this? How did Dick keep a straight face? This is coming from a man who claimed in a 1976 campaign that moral principles are all well and good unless they result in an election loss. Dick Cheney would never lie to the American people, right? cough* cough* wink* wink*. He shot a man in the face, but that was an accident, so I will let that one slide.
Bush and Cheney advocated for the Iraq War under the species premise that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction.” Bush warned repeatedly that if we don’t invade Iraq, Saddam would supply our enemies with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to use against us. This claim turned out to be a lie. When Fox News host Bill O’Reilly pressed Cheney for his rationale behind the Iraq invasion, Cheney responded, "What we gain and my concern was then and it remains today is that the biggest threat we face is the possibility of terrorist groups like al Qaeda equipped with weapons of mass destruction, with nukes, bugs or gas. That was the threat after 9/11 and when we took down Saddam Hussein we eliminated Iraq as a potential source of that." Iraq was a potential source of weapons of mass destruction. A war, waged over a potentiality, cost America $1 trillion, over 4,000 American lives, and the lives of an estimated 1 million Iraqi civilians. The Iraq War became an extension of the “War on Terror” in a post 9/11 era fueled by scare tactics and fearmongering.
This campaign ad is just one, quick example of the hypocrisy rampant in today’s politics. Politicians love to get on their soap box, tell you what’s wrong with society, and offer the end-all-be-all solution. This grandstanding and virtue signaling is ubiquitous today regardless of political party. And when politicians don’t keep their promises, there’s always an excuse. There’s always a scapegoat. It’s always someone else’s fault. You rarely see politicians take responsibility for their actions and admit when they’re wrong. That seems to be a staple of American politics. Never admit when you’re wrong, always try to spin an issue in your favor, blame everything on a scapegoat, and make yourself the hero. Because it would be political suicide if you didn’t, but hey, that’s showbiz baby!