Liar

Liar

I’ll be honest with you, I’m a liar. Don’t overreact. We’re all liars. Don’t pretend to be shocked when I say that even Presidents are liars: think Tricky Dick’s whopper that he was not a crook; think Reagan’s claim to have been present when a Nazi death camp was liberated or that supply-side economics was not trickle down or that he didn’t bake the chocolate cake for the Ayatollah; think Clinton’s extra-marital escapade(s); think Bush’s weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; think Obama’s claim that he was born in the U.S—oh, wait, he was; think Trump’s frequent claims that Obama was not born in the U.S. or that everything he does is the biggest and best in the history of the country, the planet, the solar system, and even the universe. To give Trump credit for some honesty, he does admit that his boasts about his great achievements are incredible.

When politicians get caught with their hands in the literal or figurative till, they attempt to distract the public’s attention by whining: “Yes, but what look what Fulano de Tal (from the opposite party) did.” I may be a liar (and a whiner), but I don’t intend to distract from my guilt by ratting out our Presidents for the same sins. Neither do I blame them in order to lessen my own guilt. They were not my role models. I began my career as a liar long before I was aware of our Presidents and their intimate relations with deceit. As a child, I told silly, easily disprovable lies, often telling my angry father that I didn’t do whatever it was that upset him when plainly I had. Once when I was upset with my brother—I think he had squealed on me, and I wanted some payback—I carved my initials on a desk we shared, thinking that my parents would never believe that I was stupid enough to carve my own initials, thinking that my parents would believe that my sneaky brother did it for the express purpose of getting me in trouble. Thinking has too often been problematic for me. That lie pounded home, by way of my sore behind, two important lessons: avoid devious lies—keep them simple; and my parents had unshakeable faith in my stupidity. Several years later, I opted for stupidity in another silly lie: I told my high school English teacher that I had guessed wrong on all the latest quiz questions, not because I had not read the riveting final chapters of Ivanhoe, which I obviously hadn’t, but because I didn’t understand it. She pitied me and gave me a B (for Bullshit?).

Yes, I confess that I had no true compunction against telling lies when I was a boy, only against getting caught. I lied as readily and easily as Huck Finn who lived a short distance upriver from me, but in a different time zone. Lying was one of my few natural talents. I sneered at the honesty-was-the-best-policy cliché. That was for suckers. I thought Geo Washington was a stupid boy to risk a whupping in the cherry tree incident. We had two cherry trees that I would gladly have chopped down because picking and pitting cherries was an onerous chore, especially pitting on hot summer days when the juice ran down my arms and attracted even more flies that usual. The only reason the hateful trees remained standing was that chopping them down would have been an onerous chore, resulting in a whupping if I told the truth, and a whupping with a few bonus whacks if I chopped them down and tried to cover my crime with another unbelievable lie. Whereas, if I sucked it up and picked and pitted cherries I would get a slice or two of mom’s cherry pie.  She made great cherry pie.

I am not proud of my lies, but I am proud of the fact that although we had a dog, I never once, among my many boyhood lies, told a teacher that the dog ate my homework, not that I had any literary objections to cliches, but because even I thought that one too silly to believe. Or perhaps I’m lying now. Perhaps I was simply not smart enough to think of that lie. It was all too long and too many lies ago.

Lies can be very personal, and I refuse to confess to any more of my particular lies. Reading is like shopping, and “let the buyer beware” holds true for both. It’s up to you, dear and not-so-dear readers, to decide whether what I write is true or false. Last night, while enjoying my cognac and chocolate, it occurred to me—perhaps because I experienced an intrusive traumatic memory of the far, far too many True-False tests I endured in my far, far too many school years—that life is an unending T-F test, and the majority of humankind struggles to get C’s while far, far too many report cards are filled with D’s and F’s. However, failing report cards seem to be passes to Trump rallies. Even when Truth is self-evident, she is pursued by Falsehood, and too often she surely feels his fetid breath on her neck.

My boyhood lies, and indeed my adulthood lies, have not had much effect on the course of history, the march of progress or its retreat. My lies have been of little consequence because I am of little consequence, and in my approaching senility my lies have become even less consequential. My limited area of operations has limited my lies to telling my dentist that I floss every day or my doctor that I have only one glass of wine with dinner. Or the kind of little lies meant to protect others from hurt or harm or spare their feelings, not to gain an advantage. Honest. There is no advantage to be gained when I said: “Your costume parties are such a treat and I truly wanted to go, but the truth is I couldn’t because the dog ate my Trump mask.” The earth is not shattered by my lies. If there were a Richter Scale for lies, mine would be in the 0.00001 to 0.00002 range, at best. They harm no one in the next country, town, or the house next door.

The lies of politicians, heads of state, and generals of armies do have great consequences. And unfortunately their lies are often long lived. While only I remember the little lie about my carved initials, which, in any case, no one believed, half a century later many Wisconsinites still believe McCarthy’s lies about the lists in his possession of evil communists in our government, lies he told with conviction and vehemence while theatrically waving blank sheets of paper before the TV cameras. Many in the Q-Anon congregation still believe that D.T. will save us from the deep state pedophile ring, although few, if any, still believe that the pedophile headquarters is located in the basement of a pizza joint in Baltimore. Worse yet, many still believe that D.T. has overwhelming and irrefutable proof that the election was stolen by the worst fraud in the history of the galaxy, but the Supreme Court Justices refuse to let him present that evidence. Although appointed by him, they have been corrupted by the deep state that only he can save us from. Not to worry, Trump’s armed jihadists are standing by in case they are needed to squash this fraud.

Some say that D.T. brags far too much, but I say he has good reason to brag: his lies are far more consequential than mine.  And I freely admit, with just a touch of lie envy, that although we have both been active practitioners of this art form for the same length of time, his lies are bigger than mine.

How to explain the believability and longevity of certain lies? Sometimes, while enjoying my evening cognac and chocolate, I reflect on this existential question. After the cognac, answers occur, and it seems that the more ridiculous the lie, the more transparent the liar, the stronger the belief. Belief is like a high-tech start-up, and believers are venture capitalists who invest in lies. When confronted with the failure of the enterprise they shovel in more belief rather than declare bankruptcy. Belief can also be a religious experience. Trump’s rallies are revival meetings. When he speaks in tongues his followers shout and cheer with true religious fervor, whether his tongues are forked or not. The true believers ride on emotional highs and are rewarded with a temporary trip to paradise. Truth and falsehood don’t enter into the equation. Belief is the answer.  

Truthful and trusty Merriam-Webster offers many definitions of the word lie, verb and noun, among them: “to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive; to create a false or misleading impression; an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker or writer to be untrue with intent to deceive; an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker or writer.” While a liar is simply “someone who tells lies.”

By underlining “intent,” perhaps M-W intends to distinguish between Falsehood and Lie, but if so, why does she confuse us with her last definition in which the liar may believe his lie? She confuses us even further with her second definition of Falsehood: “a lie.” English is a poverty-stricken language and doesn’t seem to have a good, dependable noun for a false statement the stater believes to be true. I believe “Falsehood” will serve. In any case, the distinction is not useful on a T-F test, and of limited use in life. When LBJ told us about a second attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, he might have believed it, although Navy archive footage show that it did not occur. Giving LBJ the benefit of doubt, let’s say he got bad information and believed that a second attack occurred, in which case it was not a lie but a falsehood. All the same, that falsehood dragged us, kicking and screaming, into the Vietnam War. When General Westmoreland said, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient,” he might have believed it. Giving the good general the benefit of a doubt, let’s say he was merely an ignorant racist and believed what he said. All the same that falsehood supported his policy of attrition, which led to a great many deaths of Vietnamese. 2,500 years ago, Aeschylus, said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” And the Vietnam War coaxed a great many fibs and falsehoods from our leaders, including candidate Nixon’s secret plan to end the war and President Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia. Another example to show that the Vietnam war was not just an outlier: When Bush the Second said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he might have believed it. The fact that Saddam did not made no difference at his trial or to the subsequent long years of war and suffering of the Iraqi people.

Life presents an unending series of choices, and children and politicians often make less than rational choices. In my high school years, my amygdala was in the lowest percentile of development, and I chose the Projection Club over the Debate Club, thinking I could get a few tips on how to project my faults on my brother, but all I learned was that you had to keep an eye on the lower loop in old film projectors. During moments of senile nostalgia, I wonder what great honors and prestige I might have gained but for that irrational and regrettable teenage decision. I know little about Debate Clubs but I persist in the vague belief that members learn to argue in favor of both sides of a given statement, possibly good training for marshalling facts and logic, and even better training for covering up Lies and Falsehoods. Had I learned great debating skills, had I learned to argue with great fervor opposing sides of an issue, I might have become a Supreme Court Injustice like Kavanaugh who argued against executive privilege during the Clinton years, but in favor of it during the Bush years. I might have become the leader of the Senate like McConnell who argued during the Obama administration that Presidential nominations for Supreme Court Justices should not be confirmed within a year a Presidential election, and that they should during the Trump administration. Some might call these examples of hypocrisy, but, never having gained debate-club wisdom, I withhold judgement.

It does seem to me that Falsehoods can evolve into Lies. For instance, that famous purveyor of Fake News, the Washington Post has compiled a data base of over 25,000 false or misleading claims by Trump, which, if WAPO can be trusted, should make Trump either the most ignorant or dishonest President in history. Finally, he achieved the distinction of being the biggest and the best in history at something. Does he believe these 25,000 falsehoods? With unlimited access to experts and think tanks and even Wiki, why has no one corrected him? Educated him? Can he truly believe that he has done more for Blacks than any President in US history? That Mexico is paying for the biggest and most beautiful border wall in history (China gave the world a great virus, but not a great wall), which, by the way, has only been extended slightly, and that in a sensitive biosphere? That the US has handled the corona virus pandemic better than anyone in the Universe? That hydroxychloroquine is a cure for COVID 19? Or maybe you should inject bleach? That non-US-citizen Obama left no ventilators? That he has irrefutable proof of the biggest and worst election fraud in history? Well, you’ll have to do a search if you want to see all 25,000+.

One of my favorite authors was renowned for his lying skill. I believe he fell well short of the 25,000+ mark in four years, but he even lied about his name when telling his lies, while Trump proudly trumpeted his. The difference between the whoppers told by D. J. Trump and S. L. Clemens is that the former sought an advantage while the latter sought only to entertain. The whoppers of neither are all that believable, but I must confess that when still an innocent boy, I believed that some Calaveras frogs could swallow a load or two of buckshot and live, but not jump, and California jays might attempt to fill up deserted mountain cabins with acorns. I have never been so innocent that I swallowed any of Trump’s whoppers.

D. J. Trump often prefaces his whoppers with the statement, “I have heard,” or “People are saying,” to avoid blame for any of his lies. Taking a page from his liars’ manual, let me say that I have heard that the Big D also leads the league in the number of high level minions who are bent on telling whoppers whenever the opportunity arises. One glaring instance is Attorney General Barr’s synopsis of the Mueller Report. Some might accuse Barr, et al, of stupidity for putting in writing lies and half-truths easily disprovable by anyone who might actually read the report. However, we should always give credit where credit is due, and our nation’s chief minister of justice knew that spin trumps truth when you get your version out first. I believe that Barr excelled in his high-school debate club.

Speaking of half-truths, why do we never speak of half-lies? Interestingly, if you google half-truth, Merriam-Webster will inform you that it is: “a statement that is only partially true; a statement that mingles truth and falsehood with deliberate intent to deceive.” If you google “half-lie,” a deceitful algorithm will divert you to “half-life” yet tell you nothing about how long a lie lives. Being a realist whenever I hear Trump’s minions speak, I view their speeches as full of half-lies and empty of half-truths? I firmly believe that the mingling of truth and falsehood “with deliberate intent to deceive” results in a bastard lie.

And while we’ve got M-W open, let’s look up the definition of spin: “engaging in spin control (as in politics).” This is why I gave up on Ivanhoe: every time I looked up a word I didn’t know I always had to look up more words to understand the definition. Now we have to look up spin control. So frustrating. While I would have given up in my pre-computer, high school days, now I can just click on the phrase and learn: “the act or practice of attempting to manipulate the way an event is interpreted by others.” M-W is being annoyingly coy. Why doesn’t she just come out and say it’s the use of half-truths, half-lies and downright lies to manipulate perceptions? Half-lies are the preferred weapons of great spin doctors such as Mitch McConnell, the Whirling Dervish of the Senate, who never met a bill he didn’t like as long as it gave millions and billions to millionaires and billionaires like him, until he was confronted with a bill that would increase the coronavirus relief package to $2,000 to households earning less than $150,000.

It might seem that I’m picking on poor Donald and his minions, but the truth is I have great sympathy for them. Honest. Well, I sympathize with the Big D, not his minions, and for a great number of reasons, but let’s just list the first few that come to mind: he’s obese and addicted to fast-food burgers; his loyal friend/attorney who said he would take a bullet for him, dodged the bullet and ratted him out; Kimberly Guilfoyle might one day be his daughter-in-law (Did you see her speech at the RNC? Scary); every day is a bad hair day for him (probably why he likes to have his MAGA hats firmly in place). Perhaps my sympathy for poor Donald results from the great empathy he generates in me; I can see aspects of myself in him, sometimes. I’m not obese but I have a food addiction: cognac and dark chocolate. I have no friends, loyal or otherwise, who would take a bullet for me. I often suffer greatly from bad hair days but my bad hair would be even more rebellious were I to don a MAGA hat. I most certainly do not empathize with his Guilfoyle problem. I suspect that Donnie’s high school projection club experience was more rewarding for him than mine was for me. Think: “Crooked Hillary” and “Election Fraud. *” Donald and I have many remarkable similarities and habits, but mostly I empathize with him, mostly I see myself in him and him in me, because we are both liars. It seems to come naturally to both of us.

*Donnie’s Election Fraud projection and his subsequent reaction to his loss are proof of my latest conspiracy theory. The conservative wing of the Republican Party has made liberal use of Election Fraud, principally in the form of voter suppression (previous to the 60’s and the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act suppression was the principal practice of the Democrats. Whereas the D’s mostly confined their election fraud to the Jim Crow South, the R’s have improved it and expanded it to many northern states). The new and improved Republican Election Fraud combined with Russian foreign aid aided Donnie in 2016. The fix was in. It is only natural then, for him to think that the fix was in again in 2020 and, projecting, the only way he could lose was if the Democratic Election Fraud was greater than the Republican. This admirably explains his frustration, not only with the Republican EF ineffectiveness, but with his hand-picked judges’ refusal to grant him a fair hearing. Poor Donnie. If it’s any consolation, he has my vote if he runs for President of the Projection Club.

P.S. No sooner had I finished this post than Donnie doubled down on his Election Fraud whoppers and instigated The Charge of the Lightheaded Brigade on the Capitol, ignoring Truth to the right of them and Truth to the left of them. I take back anything nice I might have said about Donnie and his minions. Seeing that the coup failed, said minions are, rat-like, abandoning the sinking ship of state. They do not deserve credit for suddenly encountering their long-lost ethics and spinal columns. They were cowardly enablers during their terms of enlistment, and now they are cowardly rats, still carriers of that dreadful Trump disease. Keep them in quarantine until they test negative. Remember, they are long haulers, and there is no known cure, not injecting Lysol or drinking bleach, but sincere apologies and repentance, along with community service, might alleviate some symptoms.