If you've been reading my column regularly, you know where my sympathies lie in this current Washington mishmash. 

Politicians lie, because that's the easiest way to get things done in this world. We let them lie, because the work is too hard to get to the truth. Ronald Reagan lies to us about a breach of stated policy in violation of our national security (and something that directly caused the Gulf conflicts of 1991 and 1998), about not trading arms for hostages, about not funding covert operations in Nicaragua (this last was not just a policy, but in fact was a bona fide law duly passed by Congress), and it doesn't raise an eyebrow in the public. 

George Bush lies to us about not raising our taxes, and we throw him out of office. 

Clinton lies to us about whether his stick got licked. Did anyone think this was something we'd care about? Well, maybe those low-normals who hate the guy. I mean, I hate Clinton, and yet I found it difficult to judge him beyond what he's done as a President. 

The history of politicians lying, and you can examine this at any level, whether it's Federal, state or local, is such that, if the lie doesn't involve a direct threat to our freedom, even one removed by a couple of levels but direct nevertheless, then frankly, we don't really care. 

Al D'Amato lied like Rudy Giuliani's combover to the investigators who looked into various patronage deals involving homes in Island Park, into his involvement with various corrupt businesses that brought such highly esteemed Congressmen as Mario Biaggi down, and into his involvement in the Ray Donovan scandal regarding private trash carting in the New York Metropolitan area. He was even censured for letting his brother Armand use his Senate stationery for soliciting for his consulting business. Yet, he served the state for eighteen years, and every six years, we collectively held our noses and voted him in. 

He would have won again if not for the fact that Democrats were so incensed with the sham of his Whitewater investigation, coupled with the furor over the Clinton agonistes, which forced city Democrats to come out in droves. Oh, that and the fact that he lied about using a Yiddishism about his opponent, Chuck Schumer, calling him a putzhead and then denying it. 

See, even with all the anger at Republicans, this one gaffe was the key to Schumer's win. It showed the Jewish voters outside of Schumer's district what the rest of us liberals had known all along: Al D'Amato was a vulgar, vindictive slob, who would sell out his grandmother for a chance to denigrate his opponent. It's not too far a stretch to turn that into someone who would jail someone on trumped up charges, who would investigate something that needed no investigation, who would endorse a pogrom, who would...you get the idea. Someone who behaved like a fascist. 

Anyway, enough on D'Amato. I can applaud this maturity on the part of the American public. It is as it should be, and most definitely conforms to John Stuart Mill's beliefs, which, through Jeremy Bentham et al became our guiding philosophy: as long it doesn't scare the horses, we don't care what you do in private. 

Why state the obvious, that we didn't care, and even why we didn't care? Because there's an undercurrent to this philosophy that troubles me, and to some very slight degree, I stand with the conservatives on this issue of lack of response from the public. 

See, what worries me is a two-folded issue: first, what happens the next time it's not so private a scandal, and second, how this ennui or lack of concern plays out in society as a whole. 

In addition to the Clinton scandal, we've had all these side scandals, which have been juice for someone like me who likes to skewer hypocrites to watch: Henry Hyde and his "youthful indiscretions" at age 47, thirty years ago and five years younger than Clinton's Lewinski problem; Bob Livingston's serial polygamaticism; Bob Barr's serial monogamaticism, with a little overlap between movements, if you believe Larry Flynt (and I do. A side note on Bob Barr: looking at him, I always find myself wondering when the surveillance video of him taking on three gay bikers in the bathroom at The Anvil is going to come out.); John Ashcroft's (at least, I think it's his) illegitimate child; Helen Chenoweth's six year adultery (she claims they ended it when they realized how wrong it was. First, after six years, it seems to me that "wrong" stops being an issue, and boredom becomes one. Second, when did she realize it was wrong? Six months in? A year? Two? Three? Four? Five? Five and a half? This is someone whose judgement we trust? I'm waiting for her next lover to pop up, no pun intended). By the time you read this, likely Larry Flynt will have come out with more dirt, most likely about Newt getting head from a fellow professor's wife down at Kenesaw College, and rationalizing it as not really an affair ("Define 'sexual relations', Mr. Prosecutor."), because it wasn't intercourse (this story, I am assured by someone who knows, is true, as true as his little "oh-by-the-way, now-that-you-are-out-of-cancer-surgery-could-we
-finalize-our-divorce-settlement?" shtick.) 

None of these matter (except as hypocrisy exploders), yet the concern should be raised that this is numbing the American people. Bill Clinton did things that are far worse, and far more threatening to the American system, than getting a blow job from an amateur. 

He probably traded this nation's moral stance for the sake of some campaign contributions from China. This is a dangerous thing, and Clinton is most definitely not the only recipient of tainted campaign contributions from China (Bob Dole, for one, is also under investigation, and there have already been rumblings that much of the Republican contingent in the Senate is also under suspicion), but this is getting lost in the head scandal, pun intended. 

You could argue that developing trade with China is not a bad thing, and I'd agree. You could make the case that there was no harm from these contributions, and again, I'd agree, because if the only thing these funds did was speed up the process, that simply means bigger markets for us faster. The one thing you cannot dispute is, like Reagan's arms-for-hostages-for-funds-for-Contras triple play was, this was illegal. 

Bad laws should be disobeyed, true, but this law about foreign contributions has some sound policy concerns behind it. Like the requirement that the President must be a natural born United States citizen, it protects this nation from undue influence of foreign entities. 

Not entirely, as any sober assessment of OPEC or the Gulf War will reveal, but it at least minimizes the potential conflicts of interest between national security and international concerns. It forces politicians to place a veil over their actions that favor economies of other countries, like the Desert Storm imbroglio. More important, it makes decision makers pause before rushing us into another war. Had the Somalia conflict (or for that matter, Vietnam) been analyzed in public as the economic boondoggle it was, no one would have supported either action, and from the outset. This is why we've stayed out of the Hutu-Tutsi conflict, why we've worked hard to maintain a non-aggressive posture in Bosnia, and why the Koreas will go to war before we step in: we cannot justify these actions from a national security stance, in spite of the economic carrots being dangled in front of our politicians faces. 

But what happens when the economic pressure (let's call it what it is, a bribe) becomes too big? 

The American people will ignore it, because we've become numbed to national scandal. First Watergate, then Iran-Contra, now Lewinski, this is thirty years of distrust of politicians and government. We shrug our shoulders, and walk away, and figure if it isn't hitting us in the pocket in a way that we can immediately trace (remember "Read my lips.") then why should we give a shit? 

Now we get to the more insidious aspect of public lying and its cumulative effect on us: perversely, it makes us more likely to accept lies. 

Even not-so-regular readers of this column know that I try to explore manipulation and media. The arching theme of this space is to bring to your attention things that make it difficult to be an independent thinker, or others that facilitate this. I only hope that, in some small way, I can contribute to the betterment of people. Certainly the fact that the final Seinfeld episode bombed gives me hope that we are moving away from swallowing things hook, line, and sink-her. 

By enuring us to lies, the continual "Wolf"'s cry of "Scandal!" will finally become precisely that, the boy who cried "Wolf!" too often. This line of logic applies to the above argument of what-happens-when-it's-not-so-trivial, but this attitude also contributes to a willingness to suspend disbelief, powerfully, when we are desperate to do so. 

It's a difficult concept to explain, but I'll try. We all know the media manipulates us: ads make us "need" something that we really don't, movies make us feel things that we really don't, stories persuade us to believe things that are not true, in a fashion that is both disingenuous and cynical. Now, even gossip is passed off as news. 

This is not a new trend, by the way. Gossip has long been considered newsworthy, and if you think the bozos who are assailing Clinton are mean-spirited, venal vipers of vengeance, you should dig up contemporary accounts of Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. 

What is new is the ability to communicate and therefore pass off gossip as news to a broad, nationwide audience. Hence, The Drudge Report. And the stories that report what the Drudgers report, even if it is, for the most part, totally fabricated, thus giving the fabrications authenticity, meaning that legitimate news outlets give authenticity to stories that are full of shit, in order to point up how many people believe the stories and all in the name of reporting on what people believe. 

I thought Rush Limbaugh's lies were something to behold, things of awful beauty in their massiveness and scope, but Matt Drudge, save for one lucky source on the DNA evidence on The Dress, has yet to have a major factual story in his column. 

So we seek out people whom we can place our trust in, and we find them, not because they are trustworthy, but because we have to have faith in something. I'm sure those people in the Heaven's Gate cult believed strongly that Do and Re had only their best interests at heart, but come on: couldn't they find some less drastic belief system? 

The answer is, no, because the cult preyed on their vulnerability, just as all cults must, just as all religions must. And when you are paranoid enough to believe yourself chosen (carefully, I tiptoe around Old Testament concerns here), and you've been beaten down enough times by established systems, you are going to stretch to find "truth". It doesn't have to be Heaven's Gate. It can be Mosiach. It can be the belief that a gun will solve your romantic problems. It can be trust that a drug will alter your life enough that you won't be bored or hurt anymore. 

Lies told to us by people we choose to believe will be so much more damaging, precisely because we choose to suspend disbelief, because we have to. 

We've lost faith in those places we needed to have faith, in our government, in our schools, ultimately in our god, and yet, in each at various turns, we've been shown that faith to be, if not misplaced, than to be questioned. Faith that is questioned is not a bad thing, because unquestionable faith is dogmatic, and leads to the Christian Coalition. Faith that is constantly questioned is shaken faith, and that, my friends, can be very bad. There is too much going on around us not to have some bedrock to fall back on, to be able to hang on to as an anchor to a simpler system. 

Pardon the self-congratulatory confession here, but for me, that faith has been for me in me, in my belief that I can conquer whatever I have to in order to achieve exactly those things I have to. Yes, I fall short, well short, in so many ways of my goals. 

One of the least painful but most obvious things I've ever been called is a "failed actor". This meant that I was not successful from someone else's point of view: I hadn't made enough money, I hadn't had my cover story in People magazine, I didn't have my Academy Award yet. 

And even from my own point of view, I still haven't achieved what I want to achieve as an actor: a truthful performance that I've presented to a large audience to communicate something important to me, so I'd judge myself as a not-yet-successful actor, by my own standards. I've done a little of each part, energized performances of truth, communicating a belief, and even performing for ever-larger audiences, but I haven't tied the package up with string. 

For now. I have over forty years ahead of me, still. And even if, ultimately I fall short and my time ends, well, guess what? I tried, and in the doing and trying, I found truth and I didn't believe the lies. That has to count for something. 

Carl Salonen, Carl's life doesn't leave him with much time to contemplate what should go into these bios. Visit his home page at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/de_Valois