Most presidents lie. Some go a step further and craftily construct damnable lies. But the most pernicious are the Obama lies. Like statistics, they’re often used to bolster weak arguments and obfuscate reality when it dares infiltrate preconceived notions.

Lies:

Curiously, one of our least effective presidents was known for his honesty -- Jimmy Carter. But most of our greatest presidents skillfully mastered the art of deception. 

Even though President Lincoln earned the moniker Honest Abe, he was capable of duplicity; for example, saying he wasn’t negotiating with the South. FDR lied as he coaxed an isolationist nation into world war; Eisenhower lied about U2 spy planes; JFK lied that he wasn’t planning an invasion of Cuba; even Reagan was a bit disingenuous about arms for hostages. These distortions were mostly justifiable, constructed to deceive the enemy and protect the homeland. 

Damn Lies:

Damn lies ratchet up the immorality quotient, and are what Obama specializes in when he actually knows what he’s doing. They’re concocted to protect a political future or ram through unpopular legislation under the guise that “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it." There’s a problem:  millions of Americans with health plans that didn't meet ObamaCare's standards got cancellation notices. 

Devised to make palatable a vast redistribution of wealth, it rightfully earned Obama the lie of the year award. This was a damn lie he knew wasn’t true to help foist unpopular legislation on a skeptical public amidst all manner of corrupt wheeling and dealings. Every other major piece of social legislation in our history, including Social Security and Civil Rights, has enjoyed some bipartisan support, but not ObamaCare. At least Obama knew this damn lie wasn’t true, and there’s some Machiavellian comfort in that when we consider his delusional fiascoes.   

Obama Lies:

There are worse lies -- Obama lies, and they replicate when he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Since that’s most of the time, they’re quite plentiful. They’re repeated so often and are so deeply enmeshed in a contorted concoction of sophistry that they literally supplant reality. These pernicious things riddle Obama and distort his perceptions. Whereas many presidential lies protect us; Obama lies are protecting our enemies: ISIS marches on; Iran gets closer to the bomb as Obama rejects calls for more sanctions.

Obama lies are insidious because they wriggle their slimy way through his delicate psyche, untethering him from the vast world beyond self or golf course. When reality dare intrude into his bubble of self-deceit it elicits cognitive dissonance, prompting his auto defense mechanisms to blast the interlopers as phony, or blame it on hyperbolic social media. Meanwhile, ISIS marches on, Iran gets closer to the big one, and the real interloper is our supposed Commander-in-Chief.

Obama lies are an outgrowth of what French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called “bad faith,” in which he not only deceives others, but also himself. In essence, he is choosing to not be free, but engulfed in bad faith. Over time, the habit of lying “divorces [Obama] further and further from reality, so [he] see less and less clearly the choices before [him] and what is at stake in them. Eventually, [he] may be unable to see what [he’s] really doing and how it is affecting others.”

This is not abstract philosophical rumination, just consider his bizarre State of the Union address, which had the remarkable effect of eliciting bi-partisan unity: Obama is delusional on foreign policy. Obama bizarrely claimed that ISIS is on the defensive, but it soon reached the periphery of Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar Province which houses about 320 marines. And they certainly weren’t on the defensive when they captured the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi.  

Once deemed a JV team during a reckless “bad faith” episode, ISIS now has strongholds in Iraq and Syria, and has promised to "break the borders" of Jordan and Lebanon and to "free Palestine". In a gut-wrenching act of barbarism that would make anyone with a developed conscience shudder, ISIS massacred 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya. An executioner pointed his knife toward the Mediterranean and said “We will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission.” Perhaps I’ve too much good faith, but that’s not defensive.

Neither is it violent extremism -- its Islamic Terrorism! Nevertheless, subsumed by Obama lies the White House couldn’t bring itself to recognize the victims were actually Christians, and the brutal slayers invoked Allah. They really, really did, Mr. Liar-in-Chief.

Meanwhile, during years of futile negotiations, Iran continues to advance its nuclear capabilities. Despite bipartisan support for sanctions to ensure Iran’s good faith, Obama, forever deluded in bad faith, claims they’ll undermine the Sisyphean process. That’s peculiar, but then Obama lies have a way of eviscerating common sense. Economic pressure is why the Iranian regime even goes through the motions of negotiating, take them off the table and they’ll leave the table.

The evidence is there for anyone free of Obama’s pathological predisposition: ISIS marches on, Iran gets closer to the big one. Better go play a round of golf.

Obama looks through a myopic mask of delusion that has melded into the contorted face of narcissism, endangering us all in his tangled web of deceit. He may well want to give terrorists jobs instead of killing them, but he’s a negligent commander-in-chief, descending into rabid solipsism that denies the world is alight in Islamic Terrorism. Islamic, I said.

I’ll take statistics over Obama lies any day.