So How Do We Feel About All the Lying?
Cuz it seems to be the rage in American politics.
“To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.” – Octavia Butler
Clearly, Octavia’s above quote applies to the purportedly 77,302,580 American citizens who voted for Trump in 2024, because they already knew he was a liar—proven to them daily, hourly, minute-by-minute throughout his entire first term—yet they still voted for him.
In fact, his lies were legion, indisputable, egregious, often headshakingly stupid and unnecessary, yet he still lied. And they still voted for him.
He lied between then and now. He’ll be lying up till the moment they bury him on the green. He still lies—daily, hourly, minute-by-minute—and odds are good they’d still vote for him.
Hence, one can logically assume these 77,302,580 Americans, as Octavia posits, are asking to be told lies. And, ho boy, is he accommodating them!
It’s funny; back in the olden days when I was a kid, the general consensus seemed to be that lying was one of the worst human failings a person could commit. We youngsters were regularly regaled with stories depicting the merits of honesty, including, and despite it being a lie itself, the tale of our first president, George Washington, shamefully admitting to his father, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet” (referencing the infamous cherry tree). That this was, in fact, a myth was less important at the time than its general and worthy thesis: That telling the truth was a noble act.
Growing up in a Catholic family, going to a Catholic grade school, drove that point home even further. The ninth of the Ten Commandments was often cited as a reminder of veracity’s value. In its stilted, biblical vernacular, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” we were informed that honesty was a mandate, a mission, a commandment, for God’s sake, one we were meant to keep, one even we youngsters could apply to our lives—as opposed to the age-inappropriate “not coveting thy neighbor’s wife” (which took me a while to figure out … the “coveting” stuff!).
In a nutshell, I was taught, we were all taught, that lying was BAD. There was no equivocation about that, no wobbling. The courage, integrity, and backbone it took to be an honest person was something we were not only expected to aspire to, but to emulate. So I did. Because it made sense to me. Lying felt small, weak, immoral, and I didn’t want to be any of those things. So I wasn’t. And that mandate has held me in good stead my whole life. Well, except for those little “white lies” one is forced to tell when someone asks, “does this make me look lumpy?” or “did you like my meatloaf?” and it would only hurt them to say “yes” and “no” so you do wobble a bit and that’s allowed by my analysis. 😊
But basic, hardcore honesty? Persistent truth-telling? Integrity, honor; character, decency? Those are non-negotiable. Which has made living in this country at this moment—when the person designated as our “leader” is a pathological liar—very difficult. Devastating, in fact, in that gut-wrenching way one feels when the bad guy wins, or the bully batters the saint. Having a dishonest president has obliterated any currency to teach our children that the person holding the “highest office in the land” is someone to admire, to aspire to be. As good parents, good teachers and mentors, we’re obligated, in fact, to hold him up as someone to not be. Sadly, this president, and far too many of those who surround him, are the very worst rather than the best. Drunks. Perjurers. White supremacists. Misogynists. Bigots. Racists. Predators. Fascists. Liars. A sad confederacy to have in charge of our lives, our children’s lives.
How do we feel about that? How do we feel about a government of the unscrupulous, of liars? Of leadership rife with enablers, abdicators; spineless flying monkeys doing the bidding of an egregiously corrupt individual? Why has dishonesty become normalized? Why isn’t the media screeching in ALL CAPS every time the president or one of his lackeys belches out yet another egregious falsehood? Why do so many lie with such ease and alacrity, standing at podiums with silly grins and thumbs up, babbling known disinformation over and over until those who “ask to be told lies” blindly believe them? Why has lying become so standard, so expected, so enabled, that Trump, after carrying on for days about Ukrainian President Zelensky being a “dictator,” can burble, “Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that. Next question,” with little or no blowback, no queries about his cognitive abilities, his age, his mental health (all of which was de rigueur with Biden)?
Maybe Trump does have dementia, but I suspect he lies so prodigiously he forgets what he lied about. Even when he pretends he’s not lying, he’s lying. His entire brand, his identity, is built on a foundation of dishonesty. Exactly the opposite of what all good people were taught. What the 9th Commandment mandates. What all those obsequious Christians huddling around him with prayers and fawning adoration are supposed to believe.
Alarmingly, and much like the relentless spread of a virus, his proclivity for lies has metastasized into a “pandemic of prevarication,” infecting his political party. His family. His friends. His lackeys. His media. His cult followers. His cabinet. His hand-picked judges. His doctors, lawyers, kicker for the Chiefs. He’s not only suffused with the “toxins of deceit” himself, he’s spread that poison to everyone in his orbit, and the infection is spilling out into culture-at-large:
Interviews with MAGA followers are rife with ridiculous disinformation and conspiracy theories that, “someone said was true, so we’all believe it!” His spokespeople on cable media, talk radio, Sunday shows, podcasts of every kind, relentlessly spew utter bullshit to get a rise out of listeners. Republican congress people parrot mendacious talking points they’ve clearly been assigned (cuz they all bleat the same exact words without “making it their own,” as we used to say in acting class). Even his bubbly press secretary seems delighted to pass on, with no hesitation or compunction, shameful nonsense like the, “US spent $50 million on condoms for Gaza,” doubling down despite getting fact-checked.
What do we do about all this? I honestly believe that anyone reading this particular article has no desire to allow, enable, amplify a culture of rampant dishonesty and disinformation, but what do we do about it?
I’m not sure. But I think—beyond getting very active toward flipping Congress in the midterms—we have to call it out. Every time we see it, hear it, read it. Call it out to the specific media. Call it out to the specific people lying (hate to say it, but Twitter/X is one of the best places to get right to those people). Write about it. Podcast about it. Make noise about it. Call your representatives. Organize boycotts. March when and where you can. Make a fuss. Don’t act like it’s “no big deal,” as one abdicating fellow said to me. Be courageous enough to holler about it on a regular basis. UN-normalize lying.
I happen to love the way Joe Walsh (not the guitarist, the former Illinois representative who went from rabid Tea Partier to one of the most vocal anti-Trump/MAGA people around) calls out every lie, every piece of disinformation, every bullshit statement in the most unvarnished, candid ways he can. He tags the exact perpetrators on social media with his truth take-downs; he names the liars on his podcasts and during his cable news appearances. He’s fierce and fearless, and though I don’t always agree with him (and tag him when I don’t), I do admire his doggedness, his relentless demand that we not tumble mindlessly down the slope of becoming an entire nation of liars and enablers of lies.
We may not be able to do anything about Trump and his cabal of braying toadies, but we can hold everyone and anyone in our own obits, including our elected congress people, to standards of honesty and integrity that just may ultimately, after the bad people are gone, turn the tide. Be a persistent truth-teller yourself and expect everyone you deal with to be. Get creative with it. Because, let’s face it, we’re so far down at this point we can only come up. And that we must do.
“If you’re really successful at bullshitting, it means you’re not hanging around enough people smarter than you.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
what I remember in the discussion on lying in our Catholic home was that telling one lie needed 2 lies to cover it up and then 4 lies to cover those up and 8 to covers those, etc. Trump lost count on all of that a long time ago. Would he have been truthful about his real intentions in the meeting with Zelensky? He and Vance were triggered quickly revealing their hand much too early. WWIII indeed.
Love this post, Lorainne. Course I love most everything you do. Keep it up my friend.