When A Liar Speaks

How much they convince their hearers
is less a matter of bigness, though that helps,
and more a matter of the speed with which
the high flown rhetoric passes over it's audience.

When the rhetoric is properly examined,
any listener would soon discover
how much it is arrant nonsense.

But because the message travels so fast,
over the heads of  too many people,
the collective resistance is hard to find,
where they can all be critical enough
to break down what tries to bind them.

Putting The Lie Into 'Disbelief'

It takes a very special sort of insensitivity
to calculate the levels of public stupidity
to know when to stop short of telling them
one lie too many, telling the lie that they will see
for what it is and in their way call the liar out.

The next calculation then becomes
how to get the lies the leader told before,
which are now no longer safe,
credited to somebody, anybody, else.

When testing the credulity of the public
the politicians have to first become
willing guinea pigs for each other
before testing the strength of their lies
on the public who have to vote for them.

That is today's-and tomorrow's-Political Science.