 |
| So many lies. You'd think they're growing somewhere, harvested and "sold" to the public. |
"Perhaps the most powerful moral argument for honesty has to do with what the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called "bad faith." Liars deceive others, but in a sense, liars also deceive themselves. When we lie we tend to distort our own view of reality, and the more often we lie, the more habitual this distortion becomes. Over time, the habit of lying divorces us further and further from reality, so we see less and less clearly the choices before us and what is at stake in them. Eventually, we may find ourselves unable to see what we are really doing and how it is affecting others and ourselves. We end up leading inauthentic and irresponsible lives."
Seriously, is lying bad for us?
Everybody lies. Right?
I mean it’s part of our lifestyle to exaggerate about a multitude of things.
For instance, it’s normal to expand a little about how much money one has; how successful one’s children are; how smart the kids are; or, what a great sex life one has. Those are just a few common things people lie about.
But that’s small potatoes lying when you think about it. Especially when compared to the average falsehood manufacturing many political people do for a living.
Then there’s the unequalled king of lying, Mr. Trump. Remember his all-time record during his first term? There’s even a Wikipedia page devoted to his record:
"Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, including as President of the United States. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump
He’s not done of course. During the first 100 days of his second term, CNN reported, Mr. Trump continued his deceptive style. But, instead of tracking all of them, they listed only 100.
“Some of Trump’s 2025 false claims were about consequential policy matters, others about trivial personal fixations. Some were sophisticated distortions about obscure subjects, others obvious fictions about issues average Americans experience in their daily lives. Many were ad-libbed or posted on social media, but many were scripted into prepared remarks.”
“Aside from the staggering frequency and the trademark brazenness, what stood out was how repetitive Trump’s lying was. Though he regularly sprinkled in some fresh deception, he deployed a core batch of favored falsehoods again and again – undeterred by the fact that many of these claims had been publicly debunked for months or even years.”
https://www.cnn.com/politics/fact-check-trump-false-claims-debunked
All this lying doesn’t seem to matter much. Because, like me, most just expect it and discount everything coming from that direction.
Still, we do face a challenge here.
Because no one knows what is fact and what is not.
*Richard Gunderman, MD, PhD, is a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He is a professor of radiology, pediatrics, medical education, philosophy, liberal arts, and philanthropy, and vice-chair of the Radiology Department, at Indiana University. Gunderman's most recent book is X-Ray Vision.
