Peddlers of Paranoid Rumor, Lie, Fairy Tale, Urban Legend, and Distortion
I have never thought, for a second, that those who peddle leftist or nihilistic rumors, such as the ones that surrounded the Katrina story, believe them.
It's common for the non-psychotic among us to imagine that they are nuts, but they aren't. They are cynical manipulators, and know that there is a market of the ignorant and of the conspiracy-friendly who will be influenced by this stuff, such as the notion that the government blew up the levees to destroy blacks because Bush hates blacks. To label these low-life jerks as crazy morons is to greatly underestimate their calculated propaganda. They have an agenda - personal or political - which, to them, justifies tricks and deception. They know that a story, repeated often, will enter people's brains as an idea, regardless of its likelihood or believability. Once planted, ideas and images have a life of their own in our minds - hence literature, art, movies, dance and song. And propaganda.
This is why lying and deception are mortal sins in the Christian world. "Mortal sin" is a very big deal, and extremely important (you are written out of the Kingdom of God, and fated to Gehenna, without true repentence, and amends satisfactory to God, prior to death) for good reason: mortal sins have great power for evil, and these mortal sins have the power to usher people into false realities against their will or even their awareness. Thus lies and deception are a "theft of life." Because words and stories are very powerful, we count on people, in our civilization, to identify them as either fiction or fact. Some other cultures and sub-cultures do not count on this at all and make no distinction between the two. Some people hardly know the difference, and some do not care.
In our culture, we label this as sociopathy, and liars, sneaks, tricksters, and manipulators as sociopaths or sociopathic narcissists - probably somewhat genetically 3-6% of the population, and many of such are attracted to politics as a no-skills, no-heavy-knowledge, no-heavy-lifting arena for deception and narcissistic gratification (ie weak-ego-building, plus generous benefits). Some cultures, sub-cultures, and personality types regard such behavior as "normal vigorous self-interest." As a very experienced lawyer, I can say this: You always need to know what culture, or what type of personality, you are dealing with, before you let them inside the gates of your personal or civic perimeter, or "boundary," as the shrinks would say. You can take their money to do a job, but your personal perimeter needs to be sacred and your civic perimeter needs good guards.
For us regular, boring, wholesome Americans for whom honor and integrity are sacred, if difficult, ideals, fiction masquerading as fact is a tool of Satan, used against the "children of Jesus": the innocent, the trusting, the naive, the ignorant, and those solid, earnest souls who refuse to permit their spirits to be broken or their souls contaminated by cruelty, dishonesty and ruthless self-interest and self-aggrandizement.
More on this when I have a little time.
