The problem with lying

“And when the war broke out, its real horrors … were a blessing compared with the inhuman reign of the lie ….” – Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (1958).

It is beyond dispute that the President of the United States is a world-class prevaricator (derived from the L. root varus, meaning bowlegged, one who straddles and deviates from the truth). Indeed, if there were a Nobel Prize for Lying, he might actually be awarded that one. But there isn’t, and he won’t be. Nevertheless, he’ll doubtless keep on lying. Perhaps he’s getting 2X flyer miles for each one, now approaching an estimated 50K.

Take the Iran War. Please. He started it on a whim, thinking a bombing campaign would bring the country to its knees, bending to his inconstant will. How’s that conflict going? In truth, other than bad, we don’t exactly know. Why? Because POTUS 45/47, not to mention his DOD henchman, is by most accounts lying about the human and financial cost of it all (dollar figures offered recently almost certainly need to be doubled). He and DOD have deliberately undercounted the toll on our armed forces in the Middle East and the draw-down on U.S. munitions. Now, they have the effrontery to ask Congress for tens of billions of dollars more, when they haven’t accounted responsibly for the billions already expended from a near trillion dollar appropriation. No wonder the country does not support the conflict (in my 84 years, a first so early), a war begun and continued arrogantly and unlawfully (read the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Act), and with shifting purposes, presently focused on the nuclear issue.

Why doesn’t the WH/DOD just tell us the truth? Because support for the inadequately explained, unjustified, seemingly unending war would be even smaller. What miasma of incompetence and hubris conspires to prevent them from not seeing that that is so? The Iran War also lacks Biblical support and any sort of sensible support. It cannot be “won,” which is why American military planners have long told our leaders that a land war there was folly and now we know that an air war cannot succeed either. That’s why POTUS 44 won without war an agreement on the nuclear issue via diplomacy, what #45/47 now claims he wants to win, after foolishly abrogating the prior agreement negotiated by American experts rather than amateurs. Why shred the very agreement he’s now trying to resecure? Is that worth the death of a dozen and a half American service personnel?

I defy any Alabamian supporting POTUS 45/47 to rebut the truth of the above and/or to honestly compare his irrational 2026 warmongering with his campaign rhetoric in 2024, promising that he would “end forever wars.” If he read books, I’d be tempted to conclude that he had been influenced by George Orwell’s 1984, which argues that forever wars serve the interests of autocratic leaders. (I’m at [email protected].)

Unfortunately, the Iran War is not the only thing about which the present POTUS is lying. As the TV pitchman says, “but there’s more.” He lies about … everything, even the status and safety of Air Force/Quatar One. He lies about the state of the economy, the reality of inflation and even the cost of gasoline. He lies about the cost to taxpayers of his billion-dollar wrecking ball campaign in our nation’s capital. The January 6, 2021, sacking of the Capitol, it turns out, was but a rehearsal for what is now the worst destruction in the city since the British set fire to the federal government in 1814.

He lies about election fraud generally, including mail-in balloting while he himself votes that way, offering bogus “evidence” to prove fraud, which, as Bill Britt argued in his July 23 commentary, has the effect of undermining confidence, first, in elections, then in democracy itself. He lies about his anti-immigrant  campaign and implicitly endorses ICE murders of persons who even appear to be opposing it. He lies about vaccines and the state of the nation’s health, including, through RFK, Jr., the dangers of the present lettuce scare in 41 states, sickening thousands of people. He lies about losing the 2020 presidential election, producing no credible evidence to support his claims — so much so that major TV networks and news channels last week either didn’t carry his rhetorical rant on the subject or, remarkably, tuned it out mid-speech. He lies about his dreams of empire-building (in Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal and the “Gulf of America”) and misuse of the armed forces in American cities. He lies about tariffs, DOGE cuts, arbitrarily cutting off federal funds to blue states, the Epstein files, climate change, pardon-granting for pay to criminals, misuse of the FBI and other intelligence-gathering agencies, rank, unlawful discrimination against women and persons of color in DOD, using his office for unprecedented personal financial gain and much more. But why go on?

What’s wrong with such presidential lying, besides its being immoral and not providing a positive example of candor for the country? Don’t all presidents lie or, at least, exaggerate and/or hide inconvenient facts? Perhaps, albeit not to the extent that POTUS 45/47 has become infamous for. He is in a class by himself. He lies so often about so much that, when it’s important that he speak the truth and be believed (think medical crises and wartime), he still doesn’t and won’t be, except by those who buy without evidence every bottle of snake oil he peddles. That is so even when he does occasionally speak truthfully. How is the country to know the difference? Think back to the COVID-19 pandemic. His uncertain leadership, inconsistencies (except perhaps for his pushing development of the vaccine), and failure to encourage vaccinations without equivocation caused, in my opinion, the unnecessary deaths of up to a million Americans (although he got his own, not to mention the best medical care in the world that probably saved his life).

Moreover, lying affects the liar as well as the lied-to, desensitizing both to the truth, or even what the facts are. It also calls into question ANYTHING that one claims to be factual, for if one relies on sources such as POTUS 45/47 or even FOX News, both of which have been proven to be unreliable sources of factual information on critical issues, how does one resolve disagreements with others? And, of course, such persistent prevarication creates an environment in which millions of Americans no longer believe in the efficacy and ethicality of our elections and of the democratic way of life, making him an assassin of both. In “Don Juan,” Lord Byron observed that a lie is but “the truth in masquerade,” but that is not so; it is the assassin of the truth and sometimes of the persons consuming it. How does one believe such a guy – and why?