It would seem that those who possess the offices of leadership believe that the only thing worse than telling a lie is telling the truth. Caught in a lie their default response is to always extend the tangled web, as though Lenin’s quote, that “A lie told often enough becomes the truth”, is not an absurdity at all. Or that Adolf Hitler’s words are the maxim to govern by, “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
I don’t generally like the use of natural villains like Lenin and Hitler to impugn the motives of others, but in this case I think the quotes show what kind of leaders have a low regard for truth, and a boundless disposition toward dishonesty. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck… This week’s news was littered with people trying to keep the truth from us, and then repeating the lies to make them seem more credible. After all, someone might spontaneously bend the truth a little, but repeating a lie would take forethought, planning, confidence, and a broken conscience. So repeating a lie raises the stakes. Like following through on a bluff in poker, firing more than once makes your lie seem more plausibly true. First we have the “Torture” report coming from the Democrats in the Senate and John McCain (I’m sorry, was that redundant?), where we were shown in 6000 pages what General Sherman told us far more succinctly many years ago, “War is Hell.” Possibly it is good to remind ourselves of what war does to men, and to evaluate where we should draw limits to the barbarism; but when you pretend that these enhanced interrogation techniques were at once horrific and at the same time completely ineffective, then you strain the lines of credulity as you overstate your case.
It could be that the Senate report was released when it was to shift the spotlight from another serial liar, Jonathan Gruber, who was testifying before the House Oversight Committee. Replying to questions about his exposed confession to essentially helping to deceive the “stupid” American voters regarding the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Gruber repeatedly contended that his “inappropriate’ comments were made to cover a lack of expertise and pretend to his colleagues that he was smarter politically than he actually was. So it would seem that we have only to decide exactly when and to whom Mr. Gruber has been deceptive. My guess would be always and to everyone.
Somewhere between Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton we in America came to the collective conclusion that lying to us was not a fatal flaw after all. Even repeated untruths, as in the case of Al Sharpton, does not disqualify some from leading the charge in the next cause. Truth, that which is reality, has been systematically replaced with dogma, that which we believe in, what we prefer reality to have been. We have been led by a faulty compass off our true north. We have first been told that truth is unknowable, and that if it is unknowable it is subjective, and that if it is subjective that it is inconsequential. If it is inconsequential then the ends justify the means and no one lie is worse than any other if your cause is just. Like Pilate in the presence of the Author of Truth we smugly betray our ignorance, “What is truth?” we say, as though it were quaint and trivial.
I don’t care how many football players, politicians and protestors do the “Hands up, Don’t shoot!” routine, it doesn’t change the fact that it probably isn’t a true rendition of what happened with Michael Brown. It didn’t matter how many times President Obama told us the Obamacare lies, time has shown that repetition doesn’t actually transform lies into reality, as Lenin said. Hitlers quote, which was actually his hypocritical condemnation of what he was describing, is probably a little closer to true; make your lie big and simple, repeat it and people will believe it… for a time.
IMHO: Do we want the truth? It often seems like Jack Nicholson memorably intoned, “You can’t handle the truth!” We prefer a lie that supports our agenda to the harsh facts of reality. From global warming, to reports of campus rapes, to the data on pay equity, to CIA interrogation techniques… truth is secondary to the cause; it is bent, ignored, muted, obfuscated or dispensed with altogether. We have those who believe that the cops can never be right when a black man is killed, and those who believe they can never be wrong. Agendas should be set forward as a theory of what is true and good. When reality does not bear out your agenda, it is not reality that should be tossed. Any relationship that has it’s foundation on dishonesty and lies is doomed to be destructive. As such, we need to be lovers of truth and haters of lies, even when our agendas are at stake. Our leaders need to be called to an even higher standard of truth because of where their lies can lead us. We are far too forgiving, at least when its our guy doing the lying. We will only get the quality of leaders that we demand. If we allow lies to be more politically advantageous than telling the truth, then we will be led by liars, even as we are, and we will be the captives of their lies.
“I believe it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.”
H.L. Mencken
Addendum: One of my most reliable fact checkers has informed me that the Lenin quote may be misattributed, and actually a Joseph Goebbels quote, which wouldn’t significantly change the application to my premise! My own further research indicates that it’s possible neither man ever said it, but that repeated repetitions of the attribution have caused people to believe that they did, which I guess is kind of ironic. I’m going to go with Lenin. That’s my story… and I’m sticking’ to it!
K. Cail
