Pinocchio’s Nose

Dateline: July 1, 2021 The Swamp

According to the 1883 fable, Pinocchio was created by Geppetto, a wood carver in a Tuscan village. The little wooden puppet’s nose grew with every lie he told.

Logicians and philosophers wax lengthy about Pinocchio’s Paradox in the puppet’s statement, “My nose grows now”.  But this article is not about logical paradoxes. It’s about political fibs and the use of the puppet’s magical nose to benefit from them.

The Democrats have apparently borrowed Pinocchio’s growing nose to bridge the wide gap between the desolation of their imagined landscape and core American values. The hope is that alluring lies will grow the nose-way and entice Americans to travel over it to the Dem side.

Open borders, cancel culture, the death of energy independence, governing through international consensus, historically high deficit spending, soaring taxes, increasing regulation, etc., will change America fundamentally. On the merits, it’s a tough sell.

Enter the nose. When value isn’t on your side, lie. Big. In fact, big, bold lies are more likely to be believed because it’s too risky to tell them. As the lies grow, the nose grows closer and closer.

According to the Dem drumbeat, our basic values are bad, hence the need for systemic change. Real dangers of the day are blamed on specific people or groups of people, If you’re disgruntled about the goings on at the Southern Border – a fentanyl flood, human trafficking, terrorist invasions – blame Trump. If you disagree with last year’s defunding of the police in Dem-controlled cities, blame the GOP.

A favorite fantasy culprit is climate change, which is responsible for everything from crypto market woes to a single building collapse.

Pinocchio’s bridge doesn’t yet reach all the way from desolation to core values.  So, we can look forward to the continuing spin until the bridge is complete and we’re dizzy enough to cross over.

Or, we can throw the bums out and let Pinocchio’s nose shrink back to its normal size.