Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist XXXVI. The Lying edition

For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales! 

Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

I'm more than a little disgusted.

We're less than a month from the primary election, which will likely (maybe, a Hageman victory boost the chance of Grey Bull) decide who Wyoming's Congressman will be, will decide who the Secretary of State will be, and will decide if traditional Wyoming Republicans continue to lose ground to new far right forces in the GOP who regard anyone who doesn't think the way they do as RINO's.

But that's not the point here.

The mail is.

The other day in the mail I received a flyer. . . I've been receiving a lot of them, which when I read it shocked me.  Not for the things it revealed, but because it seemed to simply be stating a major lie.

Now, since then I've had time to reconsider it, and I'll back down a bit.  Perhaps it didn't contain so much in the nature of knowing falsehoods, but gross exaggerations and characterizations.  In doing so, however, it crept up on being brazen enough to have gone beyond hyperbole and into fib territory.  So maybe it wasn't outright lying.

I started this post after that.

Following that, I received another one from the same candidate linking the opponent's agenda to one of a despised (locally) national figure of the opposite party, suggesting they were the same.

That's a lie.

Anyone who reads this blog, and it's not as if it's a lot of people, knows that the author is Catholic.  Catholics, at least sincere Catholics, take lying pretty seriously.  All Christians abhor lies, at least in principle, but the nature of lying is actually something that Catholic theologians have discussed in detail beyond that which some others have.  St. Thomas Aquinas regarded all lies, and by that I mean all, as sinful, varying only in the degree to which they were sinful.  That position is pretty close to the generally accepted Catholic thinking on lies in general (St. Thomas' opinion is not binding on all Catholics; it's not dogma.), but there are those who hold otherwise on some exceptional grounds, such as a lie to preserve the non detection of the innocent, for example, under some circumstances.

Most average lies are probably venial in nature, but some serious ones are mortal, and some of the stuff I'm seeing out there, if done with proper contemplation of what the speaker is saying, would appear to be in that territory. I don't know the state of anyone's soul, so I'm not declaring them to be in a state of mortal sin, but I am saying that what Robert Bolt set out in his play on St. Thomas More is playing out in a different sort of way in this election.  There's a lot of liberty being taken with the truth in some quarters.

And in some of these quarters things are so extreme at this point they really cross into the knowingly misleading.  I'm willing to cut some slack for the misled, but not for those who, I know, know better. And self-delusion, which might at best be what is going on with at least one other candidate for state office, isn't really a defense to mistruths either.

If a person wants votes so badly that they send out flyers that depart from the truth in some fashion, that ought to give a person serious pause.  Lying is a sin that becomes habitual with people who commit it, and if a person is willing to commit it to obtain office, they're likely to keep it up in office.

There is no room in my house for anyone who practices deceit; no liar will stand his ground where I can see him.

Psalm 101:7

If we support a liar, do we endorse the lies and become liars ourselves?

At some point, surely, unless we make our reasons for doing so clear in the face of the lies.

A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.

Dryden in Lawrence of Arabia. 

There are really serious things going on in the world.

Serious.

Some serious things need to be done about them.

Which makes it all the more the shame that 1) television; and then 2) the Internet and finally 3) Twitter on the Internet has seemingly reduced the national legislature to a circus.

Now, there's a lot more than that causing that, and with the release of a recent New York Times article on a related topic, we'll explore it more fully shortly.

Some future generation stands likely to accuse the current ones, and it is more than one, of fiddling while Rome burned.  Part of that is the repeated "hey, look at this" distraction.

For weeks, a state politician in national office went on the news to point out the price of gasoline and blame it on the President.  Any economist knows that the current inflationary cycle can only be blamed partially on policies of this administration, but to hear the politician speak on it, you'd think the President was personally causing a rise in the price of gasoline

Now that they're falling, he's not giving the President credit.

Not that the President would deserve credit for that. That's independent of what him as well, but to run around blaming the President for gasoline prices and then say nothing as they fall is disengenuine.

This gets to another topic.

I'm not a co-religious with this candidate, but I am with one who ran around supporting the Arizona election fraud fantasy.  

Catholics have an obligation to confess their serious sins, but for those who can rectify them, they must.

He hasn't been pointing out that Arizona's election passed muster, which was always known in the first place.

Of course, some people have deluded themselves into believing the lies.  Convincing yourself that a lie is the truth as it serves your purpose, however, doesn't really get you off the hook.

RICH I’m lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence.  

CROMWELL You lost that some time ago. If you’ve only just noticed, it can’t have been very important to you.

Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

In the end, in a democracy (which is what we are, once again, save the silly "oh no, we're a republic line that) gets the candidates we deserve.

If we elect liars, there's no reason to believe that they'll quit lying once they're in office.  If they lied to get there, why would they?

Last Prior Thread:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXXV. Griner and Russian Law, Senseless Destruction, No. 10 Cat to get new Roommate, Russia threats on Alaska, Where's the followup?