It's a sin

I'm going to keep this post very short on details, for two reasons.  A, I am trying to keep the blog apolitical, and 2, the actions of the person are not the point. His attempts at explanation are the point.

A certain congressman from Arizona, a man whose siblings once paid for an advertisement to warn their fellow Arizonans (Arizonites?) against voting for their perfidious arrogant brother, recently tweeted out a photo that appeared to show a former president of the US happily doing the grip-and-grin handshake with the president of Iran, with the caption reading “The world is a better place without these guys in power.” If you wish, you can find the whole story here.

The POTUS depicted is out of office, but the Iranian is in office to this day.
These two men never met.
The picture was photoshopped from when the EXPOTUS shook hands with the former prime minister of India.

And the result was predictable.

Many people believed it to be true and expressed their high dudgeon in colorful, if ungrammatical, terms.

In about fifteen minutes, people remarked that the photo was a put-up job, and some of the dudgeonaires mumbled their regrets. Some.

And the representative who attempted to foist off this chicanery as fact said:

“No one said this wasn’t photoshopped.”

This, of course, from a person who travels from the desert (and there ends the comparison to Moses) to write laws for you and your family.

And it could lead to all sorts of things.

You could go out to dinner and order clams, and be served cut-up rubber bands, and complain to the restaurant, only to be told, "No one told you wouldn't be served rubber bands!"

Your defense in any court proceeding...let's say you get caught speeding at 105 mph in a residential neighborhood, and get hauled into court.  Just tell the judge, "When did I ever say I wouldn't drive 105 on Maple Avenue?"

And as it happens, this representative is a dentist back home in cactus-ridden Arizona. One supposes he tells his patients, "When I said this would be a painless procedure, I meant I wouldn't feel a thing!"

I am really in a spin over this, a person serving in our congress and mansplaining his lies by asking if anyone ever heard him promising not to lie.

We keep saying we expect men and women serving as lawmakers and law enforcers and so on to be honest and true, and these things keep happening, and we just keep shrugging.

 Honestly.