Modern humans are not supposed to be so gullible, either.

For starters, there are certain “magic” words used in commercial advertising.  As is particularly useful when used in such phrases as “as much as” and “as soon as,” meaning, at best, “maybe.”  Then there’s virtually.  Though it contains the nice-sounding word virtue, it actually means not really.

Delving into politics, the usual crop of demagogues often likes to ignore common knowledge, such as the well known fact that U.S. military personnel are not supposed to commit unlawful acts, even when so ordered.  Why did six scumbag members of Congress go to the trouble of conspicuously advising our military of this obvious requirement?  For political gain, of course.  They intended to obliquely claim that Trump and Hegseth were in the process of breaking laws, even when they weren’t.

Then there’s the attempt to spin the results of the recent special election in Tennessee.  Van Epps won by a “slim margin” of nine percentage points, whereas Trump carried the same district by over twenty last year.  Oy, vey!

First off, nine points is a sizeable margin of victory.  Second, the polls just before the election had van Epps up by a mere two points, so he beat the polls by seven points.  What does this mean?  Perhaps that polls tend to underrepresent Republican strength.  The midterm elections of 2018 and 2022 also showed the problem the Repubs have when Trump is not on the ballot — as was the case just now in Tennessee, and now forever more.

The latest cause for deception is President Trump’s proposal to roll back former President Autopen’s dictate that automobile manufacturers achieve unrealistic fuel efficiencies.  California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has his shorts in a major wad over this.  His initial deception is that driving less efficient cars will cost consumers significant amounts of hard earned money.  Not mentioned is that normally efficient cars cost much less to purchase and that manufacturers can still produce more efficient cars if they want to.

All this is going on while the air in the electric vehicle balloon is rapidly escaping.  Not only are E.V.s much more expensive to purchase and maintain, but they are also really inconvenient to operate.  What never enters the thoughts of the authoritarian micro-managers, who are constantly contriving new rules and regulations, is the sublime democracy of the free market.  Forbidden from their vocabulary is the term consumer sovereignty.  People get to vote with their pocketbooks and are free to make their own decisions.

An archaic form of deception is the use of an exotic language known as legalese.  When reading the U.S. Constitution, from beginning to end, the Fourteenth Amendment marks a stark departure.  Just before it, the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolishes slavery, barely contains two sentences, and its meaning is extremely obvious.  Next up, however, the Fourteenth Amendment begins with the wildly ambiguous allusion to birthright citizenship — which is still being hotly debated over 150 years later.

Beyond deception, an enduring, politically useful fallacy has to do with the income tax burden.  American leftists continue to cling to the mantra that the “rich” don’t pay their fair share.  This is not a deception.  It instead represents a dogma that uncurious useful idiots tend to easily believe in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary.  It so happens that the top 10% of income-earners pay 72% of the income tax collected.  This goes far to explain why Democrat financial policies are so harmful, such as former Treasury secretary Janet Yellen’s strenuous advocacy for the taxing of unrealized capital gains.  She had a lot of support among her own tribe, even though it would have murdered the stock markets.

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