The Biggest Lie Politicians Tell

 That they care about you.

Think about it. How much do YOU care about total strangers? And how much do you care about millions of them? You care primarily about yourself, your family, and your friends, mainly in that order. Then there's acquaintances, work colleagues, and various people you deal with on a regular basis.

That's not to say you never care about other people, in particular strangers. If those strangers are "humanized" for you, if personal stories of their plight are brought to your attention, that evokes a sympathetic response in you. You are capable of empathy. (I'm assuming you are a normal human. There are pathological humanoids who are classified by biologists as the same as us, homo sapiens, that are incapable of empathy.) But you don't have a burning concern for strangers, most of the time.

What makes you think politicians are different from you?

In fact they care LESS about strangers than you do. (Most of them, with a small minority of exceptions, which I will come to.)

What they care about is POWER. What the hell do you think politics is about? It's about POWER. And politicians want to get and keep power.

YOU are an INSTRUMENT, to be used both to GAIN power, and to exercise power OVER.

That's pretty obvious, isn't it?

So how do politicians get away with it?

I guess people don't think, so they don't see the obvious.

But oftentimes people become "cynical," as the politicians like to say as a putdown, that is, too many false promises by the politicians are broken, too many pipe dreams are spun like so much political cotton candy, that people stop believing the bullshit.

All that I said above isn't just about the U.S. It's true in all countries.

Now there are some people who go INTO politics because there is something they care about, something about the world they want to change. If it's something to make the world better for humans, let's call them progressives. They want progress. If it's something to make things worse, call them reactionaries. Like wanting to take away hard-won rights, as the right to abortion.

Don't make the mistake of equating the word progressive with left, or reactionary with right. The terms Left and Right are used in very broad senses to encompass in both cases a variety of people with various agendas, ideologies, and attitudes. Some of the people and movements lumped in them are wholly inappropriate, especially in the case of what is "left." Two examples: environmentalism and abortion. Environmentalism is simply a rational concern with the fitness for human habitation of the world we live in. What's "leftwing" about THAT? As for abortion, that it should be identified as "leftist" is absurd. There are progressive Catholics who are anti-abortion, and Republicans who favor abortion rights, as the recent smashing success of pro-abortion rights referendums in states where GOP legislatures and Governors outlawed abortion proves. Having the right to control one's own body doesn't seem to be a left-right issue.

The reason environmentalism and abortion rights are associated with leftism is because reactionary propagandists (which includes the corporate power establishment media, the so-called "mainstream media," have made them shibboleths tied to leftism, and decades of indoctrination has branded leftism as bad, evil, socialist, communist.

So to recap: The Biggest Lie politicians tell is that they care about you.

"Smiling faces, smiling faces, tell lies." [The Undisputed Truth - "Smiling Faces Sometimes" (1971)]

Donald Trump Saves On His Taxes By Letting People Golf For Free

That Trump sure knows how to play all the angles. His "charitable donations" provide another example.

He repeatedly allows people to stage charity auctions and raffles on his golf courses gratis, which he then counts as charitable contributions, which are of course tax deductible. (And he sets the "value" of the free golf.)

In fact, Donald Trump claims millions of dollars in "charitable" deductions without having to actually part with any money.

Furthermore, his "Foundation" is funded by other people, not by him. But his name on the Foundation, the "Donald J. Trump Foundation," tricks people into thinking he's giving away money.
[1]

Or I should say, "giving away," because so-called "philanthropy" is in fact a disguised exercise in power by rich people, who get to exert control over the activities of others while also avoiding taxation on their wealth. They "win" two ways.

"Philanthropy" is part of class rule over the rest of us. Rich individuals get to decide which activities and causes- social, cultural, medical, whatever- are worthy of funding, and thus of existing to any meaningful extent. This also sets up walls delimiting what is effectively permitted in society. Those who would challenge these limits have no money to pursue their activities, while everyone else conforms their goals, interests, activities, even their ideologies and attitudes, to the requirements of "philanthropies" which control the money.

Money is power. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

These truisms are true.

We can presume from this example another reason Trump adamantly refuses to release his tax returns. They would reveal yet another sham aspect of his image- that of a generous giver.

Oh, and he also doesn't want us to know that he isn't as rich as he always brags he is.

1]  "Missing from Trump’s list of charitable giving: His own personal cash," Washington Post, May 29, 2016.