Stretching the truth

The Washington Post has determined that up through 801 days of being President, Donald Trump made false or misleading statements or claims 9,451 times. That’s 11.8 a day, every day. That would be absolutely shocking and unforgiveable if the rest of us weren’t doing it too but we are. We’ve become a dishonest nation and I remember when we weren’t.

We certainly weren’t when I was growing up. In fact, a premium was paid on telling the truth. I probably got the same lecture from my mom that many of you got from yours and that was “as long as you tell me the truth, we can work this out, but if you lie to me we can’t.” Those words have stuck with me all these years I suppose because they made so much sense to me when she said them.

Of course, most Republicans don’t seem to mind the President’s shading of the truth, even though the phrase “shading of the truth” is just another way to say “he lied” and the Democrats and many Independents take just the opposite perspective. Not because they don’t lie but because they don’t like to be lied to. None of us in fact do but the Republicans seem to take great relish in the fact that the butt of most of the President’s lies are directed at Democrats. I’ve written before about the great divide between Democrats and Republicans and this is just another example.

But it permeates much deeper than politics. Husbands and wives lie to their spouses, ministers lie to their congregants, witnesses taking an oath to tell the truth in a court of law lie to the court, police officers lie in order to get convictions, etc., etc. In fact, if we think lying is going to make a situation better for us, any of us are likely to lie.

For example, a wife messes around on her husband and he suspects something is up. If he asks her about it, is she going to tell the truth or lie?

A police officer uses illegal tactics to extract a confession from a suspect and he’s asked about it under oath in a criminal trial. Is he going to tell the truth or lie?

A student cheats on an exam, makes a higher grade than ever before and his professor suspects he didn’t come by his score honestly so he calls him in and confronts him about it. Is he going to tell the truth or lie?

There are a thousand situations and a thousand examples to illustrate what I’m talking about. We used to be taught that telling the truth was always worth it, even when we knew we were going to have to endure punishments for what we did because we could at least go to bed that night with a clear conscience.

It seems we don’t care about a clear conscience anymore; we just care about getting away with doing something we shouldn’t have done and not suffering any punishments for it. Sometimes we lie just to make ourselves look bigger or more important to those we associate with. I know

a couple of people that do this on a regular basis. In fact, I know one person who’s been lying about everything for so long, he wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him in the face.

Does lying make our lives easier or harder? Does it give us more stress or less stress? Are we so in love with lying that we’ll distort the truth even when others know that’s what we’re doing? I don’t know. Telling the truth was such a hard and fast rule when I was growing up that I never got over it so it’s hard for me to lie about anything, even though I’ve done it too when push came to shove and I thought it was my only way out.

And it certainly makes it easier to lie about anything and everything when the people we admire, respect trust, believe and even worship lie also.