In about a year from now we’ll be smack in the middle of the political season. And not just any political season, but a Presidential Season. And not just any Presidential Season, but the TRUMP political season.
And one of the main topics of discussion will be lies: Trump will decried as a liar and it will be offered as a key rationale for why he should not be President. Yet, this was all there in 2016 and he still won. We’d like to think Lying is a disqualifying action, but the reality is that Politicians lie because it works; people just don’t reject candidates for lying.
In the Trump world, there’s a discussion about the magnitude of lying. From his book the Art of the Deal:
“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”
Note how he goes from playing to “people’s fantasies” to an “innocent form of exaggeration.” And “Truthful Hyperbole” …a newspeak classic. It kind sounds coherent, but breaks down once you think about it. It is an illogical concept, to be both truthful and hyperbolic at the same time. But people would like to believe that there can be a type of truth in exaggeration. In reality, it’s just, as Trump himself notes, playing to people’s fantasies. People often want to believe exaggerated versions of things, and therein lies an opening for folks like Trump.
But to my first point, we’re not talking about exaggeration, we’re talking about lies. And there is a distinction. There’s a spectrum of deception and at some point hyperbole or little “white lies” crosses a line and becomes something society deems really bad. My Hebrew School teacher once told us that when the 10 Commandments said, “thou shalt not lie,” it wasn’t referring to telling someone politely that you liked their cooking or a new jacket they just bought when it wasn’t in fact true. Where those acceptable lies turn to bad lies is unclear, but I think it has something to do with intent: intentionally misleading people, causing harm–this is all wrapped up in the unacceptable type lying. Yet Politicians still lie with intent to deceive almost exclusively, and they’re not not rejected by the people for it.
I believe the answer is pretty simple: as Machiavelli observed, if people desire the ends, they will ignore the means. And at the end of the day people value the end goals of their politicians way more than principles of honesty. Perhaps this is obvious. Yet we hear constant criticisms of lying politicians as if their lies themselves are enough to discredit them. You’d think people would realize lying doesn’t matter…
There’s two takeaways I have from this: I think we need to change the way we criticize Politicians when they lie. If we want to be effective against lying, we need to change the critique from “you’re lying, therefore you should be disqualified” to something like “you’re lying to make your point, why can you use just use the real facts?.” The narrative needs to move past the lie, treat is a OK, but the lowest form of argument.
And, more interestingly, I’m struggling with the question of: maybe it’s not so bad that Politicians lie. The results of elections have major impacts on our lives, life and death in some cases, shouldn’t we use any means possible to succeed? Because it’s not just politics where lies are acceptable, it’s throughout all life. I’d rather fight the battle with lies than violence. If the people can’t see reality for what it is, then truth won’t do much anyway. More to think on this last one.
Intergalactic Dance 