Even When I Lie
Rusty Guinn
November 28, 2018·Politics
We've sorted ourselves into two camps, each convinced their cause is so righteous that lying becomes not a sin but a necessity. The left lies to tear down unjust institutions. The right lies to counter media bias. Both frame dishonesty as service to a Greater Truth. And we've all decided that we can tolerate this. What happens when every faction believes it's telling the truth even as it lies?
- Three types of liars exist, and we've learned to tolerate two of them. We forgive those forced to lie under duress and those who stretch truth in small social exchanges. But a third category has emerged: people who lie because they believe their cause justifies it.
- Both sides have adopted the same logic: our Greater Truth is so important that dishonesty becomes acceptable.The left redefines language and shapes media narratives. The right justifies brazenly dishonest leaders. Each side sees the other as irredeemably biased, not merely wrong.
- The mechanism isn't crude propaganda anymore. It's the quiet decision by millions to accept lies from people on their side because the stakes feel existential. We're not being forced or deceived. We're choosing to look away.
- What makes this different from earlier political dishonesty is the scale and symmetry of it. When 40 percent of the country views the other 40 percent as hateful, and that hatred is mutual, the country itself becomes unsustainable.
- The real question isn't who's worse or who started it. It's whether enough people are willing to do the harder thing: lose elections, lose cultural battles, and renounce the lies told on their behalf, even if it means strategic defeat.
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Comments
The two “greater truth” statements didn’t make my blood boil, but here’s what did: The implication that Trump is somehow worse - somehow a bigger liar, a bigger widener of the gyre, is farther outside the boundaries - than Hillary (putting classified documents on her personal email server - effectively putting our national security at risk - to advance her political goals), than Elizabeth Warren (claiming to be a Native American Indian to leverage victimhood status for political glow), than what too many to be named here did to stop Kavanaugh.
I have no truck with any of them - on either side. I didn’t and wouldn’t vote or support any of them. Maybe I’m taking the easy route by being all moral about it - maybe, but what I can’t stand is the “Trump is worse than Hillary, than Warren, than Spartacus” argument. They are all the same horror show.
The right should renounce Trump and other Trump-like conservatives and the left should renounce Hillary, Warren, et al. When both sides are willing to lose elections to reclaim some sense of morality, honor and dignity, then maybe the gyre will stop widening.
Excellent. Made me recall my favorite aphorism from William Blakes’s “Auguries of Innocence”,
“A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent.”
I think you might be reading implications that don’t exist, which can be pretty easily forgiven these days! There’s only two paragraphs which allude to Trump, and neither make any comparisons. Truthfully, Mark, I haven’t even thought about the comparisons, because I think that they’re a distraction and part of the problem we face.
I will be steadfast in my disagreement with your last point here. If we are playing for anything other than salvaging something from civilization here, enough of us must be willing to move even if the other side doesn’t. If we can make it safe to pursue a losing strategy, I think that we can do more than salvage and shorten the transition to whatever’s next.
You’re not alone in disagreeing with me rather more fatalistically here. I think Ben agrees with you more than I on this point, and we talk about it a lot.
I will think more about it, but right now, my “lean” is unilateral surrender won’t lead to a greater good. I think we need a temporary truce leading to more trust and, then, more incremental improvement - rinse, repeat. Also, sincere apologies for unintentionally misrepresenting your implications.
Really enjoyed this, thanks.
I second your idea that lying is the most pernicious rot on our body politic. One need only compare the lasting damage of the Vietnam War (a misadventure foisted on us through official lies from multiple administrations representing both political parties), with the effects of any of our non-lie-based wars.
Lies are the enemy of us all. Systematically dis-empowering liars would seem to be a rational course of conduct then, yet we seem to be doing the opposite. Power & money flows directly toward the lies and the sirens who sing them. We’ve forgotten how to navigate by the stars, and instead gotten addicted to false compasses.
The widening Gyre in the electorate is inversely proportional to the narrowing Gyre in the elected. Only the lies of the latter appear to be diverging whilst their actions are converging.
Hey Rusty, first time, long time…
I think your analysis is spot on. A lot of people get caught up in the need to argue who’s wrong or who’s worse. (If you think Trump’s bad, wait till you see Hillary or vice versa). I think it’s the same reason why our first reaction in a personal argument is to tell the other person they are wrong. It’s our ego talking. We want to be right. Our minds try to avoid a state of cognitive dissonance like the plague. But like an argument with your spouse, knowing who is wrong is useless. It reminds me of something Jordan Peterson says about this topic. Something to the effect of, if you are constantly arguing with your spouse about who’s right and you win, congratulations you’re married to a loser. Your marriage will fall apart, just like the country will fall apart.
Arguing is also useless because it doesn’t offer any solutions. It focuses on the past and not the future. Why spend time and energy on the things we cannot change? I think the prescription is to switch from a problem-oriented/past mindset towards a solution-oriented/future one. Suspend our egos and work towards solutions to the small problems everyone can agree on. That or more cowbell.
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Bravo…
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