A Nation of Liars

We are a nation of liars. I'm not sure when this happened. Perhaps we always have been, but its truly glaring now. This idea came to me this morning as i awoke to another day of the campaign for President and yet another collapse on Wall Street. So many of the crises in the last ten years can be traced to lying and accepting those lies. Did we always lie so baldly and did we always just look the other way? I don't know but I really hope not. I hope that this last decade has been an anomaly in terms of lying and that at some point we will say enough. But I'm not confident. I look at the current circumstances that have been created and wonder if the price we are paying will finally tell us that lying is not a foundation for a stable country, economy, or career or family life.

Wall Street Lies
When the dot.com bubble burst we professed to be stunned that people like Henry Blodgett, a securities analyst were lying about stocks - hyping them in public while trashing them in private. His and others aim was to make money, damn the consequences for those lied to. There was a brief revulsion about these revelations, but soon we were back to accepting, if not perpetrating lies. Enron and similar stories were a web of lies to make money. Somehow this surprised us, but it shouldn't have. Plenty of people absolutely knew these folks were lying and they said nothing. They accepted their lies without calling them out, otherwise the fraud would not have gone on as long. Now we are in another Wall Street scandal built on lies about the value of securities. It's representative of a culture that accepts lying as a way of getting what you want. Only when the circumstances spread outward like a pool, overwhelming the very systems that are being lied about does the condemnation seem to occur.

Lying is good is quietly promoted throughout the culture, from Survivor reality shows on TV to the spin-meisters of the Presidential campaign. Everyone seems to accept that its okay to lie if it gets you what you want. We continue not to call them out. Yes, there are few individuals who may complain or express contempt or offense at the lies, but the overwhelming acceptance comes from so many quarters, that everyone seems an appropriate description. The following are examples of how far we have run off the honesty track in the last decade. Is this ok? Are we willing to accept this as business as usual as long as we get what we want? Perhaps.

President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton looked the American public in the eye and lied. Yes, it was a personal matter, but he made it a public one by lying. However, the issue quickly became a partisan fight over his Presidency, rather than a universal condemnation of his lying. Had the Congress passed a bi-partisan resolution condemning his conduct instead of starting a witch hunt to drive him out of office, the issue of lying would have been far better denounced and the culture would have had the idea that lying is wrong and has appropriate consequences more fully enshrined. Instead the message is don't get caught or just gut it out.

Iraq War
President George Bush & Vice President Dick Cheney have been shown to have lied over and over about the Iraq war, yet whether you accept or reject this is not based on the issue of lying, its based largely on whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. No one has been called to account for these lies. The Democrats in Congress are afraid of alienating the public if they say enough with your lies, you will be accountable; the Republicans are afraid of losing the White House for a generation if they acknowledge the lies. This is not a lie about a personal flaw and therefore has great consequences for the nation and yet no one is held accountable for the lies. If Representative Kucinich goes after the lying, we make fun of his ardor and his looks and we push him in the basement so he will not be noticed, because he has little support in Congress. Fear of the judgment of the electorate rattles the leaders of the political parties. The Republicans claim even this small effort is a witch hunt designed as revenge for the impeachment effort on Clinton, even though in private they know they have been lied to. Dick Cheney calls a friend, Dick Armey, into his office and lies to him about Iraq, sufficient to get his support. We find out about this six years later because Mr. Armey is finally angry enough about being lied to that he confides the truth in a writer. We are never told by most leaders what they really believe because they are wedded to talking points that will, they hope get them re-elected. Where you stand is where you sit. There is absolutely no sense of honesty or open outrage, however terrible the consequences from these lies, from most people.

This lack of honesty permeates the culture on television news as well as the entertainment divisions in shows such as Survivor and Big Brother. We find out that supposedly respected and honorable retired military men, sworn to uphold the constitution, have been spewing the talking points provided by the Pentagon and White House, through a program of deliberate manipulation, in their "analysis" of the war and its aftermath. When this comes out, is there a hew and cry, is there a consequence; no, it is defended and then just accepted as spin.

In the Valerie Plame affair, the news media was complicit in the lies surrounding her exposure. Bob Woodward, Tim Russert, Bob Novak, individual employees of the New York Times and Time magazine and others all knew at least part of truth, but they came on television and acted as though they were neutral, uninterested parties just exposing the facts. They paid no penalty for their complicity. Leaders in the White House knew the truth, since they were participants, but allowed the issue to be dragged out over months by playing ignorant or uninformed to ensure their hold on power. And when just one person was held accountable for his lies, the President basically pardoned him and refused to fire the others found to be lying even though he had said they would be fired. Lying is apparently not the crime, getting caught is.

These weren't inconsequential lies, they were lies of life and death and yet there is no outrage by the public at large, no recoiling about the total absence of fundamental honesty in our leaders. It is generally accepted as the way to get what you want. Little wonder dishonesty is permeating all of society.


2008 Presidential Election
And now we come to the election of 2008, arguably one of the most significant elections ever. Lies permeate the campaign discussions. Even after being called out by a usually acquiescent media for his bald-faced lies, John McCain and his running mate continue to repeat those lies. The pro McCain public believes the media is at fault and refuses to accept that their lying is wrong. No one doubts the reasons why Ms. Palin was selected by Mr. McCain, and the decision might be tactically and strategically brilliant, who knows, but to pretend that she among all other Republicans is the most qualified to be President is a lie. What happened to conservative outrage about affirmative action when it results in the less qualified candidate getting the job? It is lost in the desire to win.

Analysts for each side repeat the talking points of the campaign trying to stay on message, but they don't just stay on message with the ideas they agree with, they lie about their own views solely to further their candidates campaign. When analysts such as Peggy Noonan & Mike Murphy basically say one thing to the audience and then get caught saying what they really think from an open mike, there is little outrage at being lied to. In fact, they immediately write a mea culpa to explain what they really meant when they thought no one was listening and what they really meant was the opposite of what they actually did say. And the news corporations continue to air them as though they have some insight. When Jessie Jackson says one thing on the air and then is heard on an open mike saying something totally opposite, there is overall smirking about what he said, but no outrage that this "Reverend" was lying about his support. When Carly Fiorina accidentally told the truth as she believed it to be about the skills of the candidates, she was whisked away to oblivion likely for the remainder of the campaign; along with Phil Gramm who clearly believed what he said about whiners, he just wished he hadn't said it aloud. Only truth is punished in this election. And there is no penalty for lying. Lying is accepted if it gets you what you want. Even I don't expect campaigns in this day and age to be squeaky clean when it comes to their campaign records or those of their opponents, but surely there should be a difference between emphasis and exaggeration for effect, being simplistic, being less than artful in order to get your point across and outright lying, but apparently we acquiesce in the lying.

Barack Obama and John McCain promised a high minded campaign on the issues. McCain abandoned that promise when he realized that as he agrees with the Republican Reagan orthodoxy on most of the issues and the public has moved away from that orthodoxy, he would probably lose on the issues. I truly believe that Obama tried to run such a campaign until it became clear that the election would not be run on issues but on the cultural divide that afflicts this country and that is promoted as a substitute for reason. He then decided that attacks were the only way to win. History probably supports that decision, even if we say we reject it. But attacks breed lies about the issues and avoid truly talking about what we as a country believe and what want from our government and are willing to pay for. Any truths about policies involving taxes, health care, unemployment, war and terrorism, immigration, environment and energy are lost in attacks which, by their nature distort the truth. Whomever wins, we will likely not have any consensus about the issues that will have to be addressed by the winner, thereby making governing doubly difficult.

Please, someone, tell me we are not really a nation of liars. Tell me that we really do believe honesty is the best policy and that lying undermines our democracy as well as our economy and our society. Tell me that we have had enough and that from now on we will call people out when they lie, that we will set an example for our children that lying is wrong, that we will try and support a different ethic in ourselves, our leaders, our media and our commerce. If we can't be truthful, we could be silent.