0429blog
Never Tell a Lie
Honesty is the best policy, depending on the situation and sometimes it is the worst policy.
People should wear belts with a series of lights that turn on whenever they lie; parents would have them, lawyers could wear belts with more lights, politicians even more and the most would be worn by the clergy who are always lying. That would make things a lot easier but instead it is very hard to know when someone is twisting the truth like a pretzel.
The older you got the more lights you would need and if you’re a baby you don’t need any lights at all because you don’t yet know why it is so important to lie, lie, lie. It has nothing to do with your class, your race, your religion, everybody is a liar to one degree or another and we are taught that lying is just part of living because everybody does it. There was a time when parents told their children that it was wrong to lie but then Donald Trump was elected and lying became admirable and a skill that took constant work to hone. I don’t know how you turn the tide and get back to the good old days when people didn’t lie, at least not as much as today or at least they didn’t get caught as often.
There are white lies, lies by omission, exaggerations, “gray” or subtle lies and complete untruths but a rose by any other name smells just as sweet, thank you William Shakespeare.
An existential riddle known as the “Liar’s Paradox” was first uttered several thousand years ago by Epimenides the Cretan and it goes something like “I lie all the time and that is a lie so therefore I always tell the truth but that must be a lie, too.” I have no idea what it means. And then there’s the saying that the history books are written by the victors and George Santayana’s reflection that “History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.”
There are many ways to justify lying like when your boss asks if you think she’s a fair boss or when your spouse asks you for your honest appraisal of whether she or he looks fat or when you son or daughter asks why you drink so much and you say you don’t really drink much or when you tell your grandmother she bought you the best pair of birthday socks ever. Eventually, people can’t tell the difference between a lie and truth because they are too busy justifying, rationalizing and otherwise trying to survive and they realize everybody does it anyway.
Lawyers are very good at lying but they are terrible people because they will say whatever works in order to get their client off the hook, and it doesn’t matter if it’s about a mass murder or theft of a can of peanuts from WalMart. It doesn’t really matter why the murderer murdered or why the peanut thief struck, the point is to be found not guilty and lawyers get paid a lot when they win and they will get more customers the more they win and lie. “If it fits you must acquit,” “I never had sex with that woman” and “there were more people at the inauguration than at any other inauguration” qualify as a few of best lies. In court, the lying begins right away when the witness puts his hand on the Bible and promises “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god” and to proceed to tell rampant, incredible, unbelievable lies based on the attorney’s advice but the judge gets it because he or she is also a judge and has been there.
Lying politicians is redundant and has not been news for some time now. It’s part of the elected official handbook and on page 322 it requires politicians to lie at least once a day or more if they are running for re-election or risk being thrown out of office.
There are big lies, like claiming an American destroyer was targeted by the North Vietnamese when nothing of the sort happened and the lie by LBJ was just so he could lead the nation into a bigger war. Or the whopper when Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev swore up and down that there were no nuclear missiles in Cuba and in fact, they were just part of a new Disneyland-like development for Soviet expats.
And there are little lies, white lies, like when you tell your colleague that you like her new haircut or when your child asks when you will be leaving the mall and you say “soon” knowing full-well that you plan to visit 17 more stores or leaving a message at work saying you won’t be in that day because you’re feeling “fluey.” The problem is that white lies can morph into medium size lies which can transform into big lies and you don’t even realize it’s happening and pretty soon your ethical foundation is as rotten as Denmark.
Members of the clergy lie all the time and it’s true of priests, ministers, rabbis and imams. It’s understandable because these are the people who are called on to answer unanswerable questions, like why did God allow the holocaust to happen or why didn’t God stop slavery. It’s the rare clergy member who responds, “I have no idea why” and more likely retorts with “God was testing the Jews to find if they would still worship after being massacred like bugs” or “God didn’t stop slavery because he wanted people to cure their own ills and in that way they wouldn’t repeat their mistakes.”
Some lies are said because it will be profitable as with P.T. Barnum who sold tickets to see Joice Heth, purportedly the 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington. Heth was a former slave but as far as living to be 161, that was to get more people through the turnstiles and most who entered believed Barnum’s nonsense because people love lies. Or when the cigarette industry said that smoking doesn’t cause cancer and they went on selling cancer-sticks to millions and millions of unknowing victims.
Sometimes lying is about really important things, like baseball, as when the Chicago White Sox baseball players intentionally lost against the Cincinnati Reds so they could collect a bribe from a well-known mobster and the scandal was forever known as the “Black Sox Scandal” and it made young boys and old grandfathers weep throughout the land. Or when Pete Rose insisted he did not gamble and that lie led him to a lifelong banishment from baseball and a virtual torrent of alligator tears and even though he has more hits than any other Major Leaguer, he may never enter the Hall of Fame, unless Donald Trump is the head of baseball and forgives Rose and the lying lights would shine like the aurora borealis.
By the way I have never written about lying, really.