Lying about the Truth

I’ve been working on a post discussing and expanding on a magazine article ostensibly focusing on Bush’s comparative stature as President of the United States of America. In the process I came across an article by Elaine Cassel at City Pages. She has entitled her blog Civil Liberties Watch and it includes many articles discussing this topic. The article I want to include here in its entirety is entitled A Moment of Truth and it relates well to my recent post on the Will to Ignornace. At one point, in parentheses, I noted how my discussing the will to ignorance didn’t even “take into account those who are actively involved in lying, distorting and subverting the truth!” Cassel’s article, however, focuses on such liars and the damage they cause.

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A Moment of Truth

by Elaine Cassel

The media is filled with Republican pundits, right-wring Christians, and arrogant politicians lambasting Patrick Fitzgerald for prosecuting Scooter Libby for lying to the FBI and the grand jury. Not a “real” crime, sniffs Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who, surely, being from Texas, must know a lot about lies. Big lies, and how to tell them.

Why is it that these Republicans choose not to embrace the truth, and telling the truth, as a revered “family value” or American “virtue”?

It’s because lying is part and parcel of their overarching policy-a policy that is to its core, aggressive, yet weak, self-serving and subversive, manipulative and antisocial. Just like their policies. All of them.

Though much research has been devoted to detecting deception, almost no one has studied the psychology of lying. Since lying is antithetical to the workings of the civil or criminal justice system, as Patrick Fitzgerald so eloquently stated, as a lawyer nothing is more odious to me than a lying client, judge, cop, juror, or witness. They mock the entire legal system. They attack it, they subvert it. They derail justice.

So, too, do our lying leaders mock, subvert, and derail the very foundation upon which democratic institutions are built-the truth.

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