You can't serve two masters

My friend and fellow columnist Dick Trail and I don't agree on a lot of things but there's one thing we share absolutely the same perspective on and that is we don't like to be lied to. Dick seems to think that only Democrats lie, conveniently turning a deaf ear and blind eye to the lies told by people in his own party but that's another column. I want to focus on personal honesty in this one.

Now you may think that no one else likes to be lied to either but that would be a mistake. Life tells us that many people are very comfortable with being lied to. They build little cocoons around themselves, stick their heads in the sand and hear and see only what they choose to. To pretend the lies don't exist is certainly one way to deal with them but a pretty sad and shameful way.

In many ways, the person being lied to that puts up with it is just as guilty as the person doing the lying. They are, in fact, willing partners in this deceit that invalidates the reputation of both.

I'll mention a famous couple to illustrate the point but there are many other couples you know who are doing the same thing.

Former President Bill Clinton has always had a reputation for philandering, all the way back to when his political career began in Arkansas. His wife, Hillary, knew this, of course, because of what appeared regularly in the media. Hillary is a strong, proud woman and obviously didn't like his carousing and lying but what we have to understand about this couple is that they were a political couple and not a romantic one.

The first time Bill brought Hillary home to meet his mother, his mom took him into the kitchen and questioned him about his choice of dates because she didn't think Hillary was very attractive and, consequently, not worthy of Bill's attention. Bill quickly told her he had dated other women that were more physically attractive but Hillary was his intellectual equal, something he had not found before, and that she would make a great partner moving forward. And, of course, she did.

She did because their marriage wasn't a relationship, it was an arrangement. Both of them were extremely bright and ambitious and they saw right away how they could aid each other's political careers. So her defense of Bill on national television when she quoted Tammy Wynette's song, "Stand By Your Man" was said more to help salvage her political future than to save her marriage. Bill, of course, apologized profusely to anyone who would listen AFTER he got caught, which is what almost everyone does. In other words, we're not sorry for what we did, we're sorry we got caught. This usually works because so many of us are quick to forgive because we don't want to lose faith in people we have put on a pedestal. So we stick our heads in the sand too.

President Clinton was an easy target since his position made everything he did newsworthy. But what he did is repeated thousands of times every day by ordinary people whose exploits are NOT newsworthy and that makes many of them believe they can get away with it.

Many of the liars and deceivers are women rather than men. Many married women get bored fairly quickly in their relationships because a lot of men are creatures of habit. They seem to do the same things the same way day after day and the spontaneity that was there in the beginning of the relationship quickly dies. Because many women enjoy spontaneity and unpredictability, they go looking for it elsewhere. It might surprise you to know that 75 percent of all divorce petitions in the United States are filed by women. Obviously, some of those petitions are filed because the man did the woman wrong but many are filed for just the opposite reason. They found a man more exciting than the man they were married to.

I don't know how Hillary could have stayed married to Bill once she knew about them, regardless of the reason for their marriage to begin with. Nor do I understand how regular people can stay married when they discover that their partner has been lying to them for days, months or even years. Because when the honesty disappears from a relationship, there's really nothing left. If you've lied to me before, there's always the chance you're going to lie to me again and most people can't live their lives based on that likelihood.

But some do by ignoring reality, living in a fantasy world they've concocted in their minds, and keeping their heads stuck permanently in the sand. One Master is the truth, the other is the Lie and they've chosen the latter.

Often they don't realize the fatal mistake they've made until it's too late.