Truth and Consequences

We are told, from the time we can understand language, that we should always tell the truth. Often the telling is reinforced by varying degrees of punishment for failing to tell the truth. And we are given historical examples—one of the favorites being George Washington admitting to his father that he cut down the cherry tree. ‘The father of our country became great because he told the truth from a young age,’ we are told; and so can you, is the implication. But early on, we also run into experiences that indicate that telling the truth, and being rewarded for it, is not always followed, even by the adults we respect. We see our parents shading the truth, either to get themselves off the hook, or to make a score in business, or to spare a relative’s feelings. And we ourselves see, as I did in about the third grade, that telling the truth doesn’t always work as planned. That third-grade episode stuck with me for a long time. Three of us on our way to school one morning decided to raid a watermelon field we regularly passed. My brother and I and a neighbor all spent half an hour eating watermelon, and then got to school after the bell had rung. Terrified, we all decided to lie and say we had stomach aches, and that was why we got to school late. I dutifully did this, honoring our pact. My teacher didn’t believe me, and assigned me detention. When school let out, I immediately checked with my co-conspirators, who then informed me that, contrary to our pact, they had admitted what we had done, and were let off. I was the only one who had to endure a week’s detention. Truth can thus be confusing. Telling a lie, but being true to our pact, I got punished. For the others, telling the truth, but lying with respect to our pact, got them leniency. 

            “What is truth?” Pontius Pilate replied to Jesus, after the latter had averred “For this reason I was born and have come into the world, to testify to the truth.” (John: 18:38). So here, the Son of God asserts that proclaiming the truth is the very reason He came into this world. A powerful endorsement, about as powerful as it gets. Even so, the truth teller is rare, as Hamlet tells Polonius: “To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.” (II, 2). Why? Because almost everything militates against it, as I found out in third grade. We all want to protect ourselves. We’re all always looking for a way out of whatever dilemma we’ve gotten ourselves into. Julian Jaynes, in his classic 1976 work, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, actually makes the case that lying and deception are at the heart of human cognitive development. This is because, he maintains, humans are the one species that can carry on long-term deception (many animals can deceive short-term, feigning injury or using camouflage to aid in hunting or hiding). Only we humans can do it because we have consciousness and language to aid memory, to remember what we’re really after and what deceptions (we have to keep them straight) we’ve utilized in that pursuit. 

            So truth is both critical and rare as this world goes. In politics, it’s even rarer; and, I would maintain, more critical in situations like the deadly one we are facing now. When thousands, millions of lives are at stake, being able to rely on the truth is the glue that holds a  culture together, a matter of life and death. Of course, this is the case in other critical situations, like war. But the thing about war is that often, being able to lie, to deceive the enemy about one’s intentions or troop strength or movements becomes more than critical. It becomes, again, a matter of success or failure in battle, of literal life and death. So commanders must know how to deceive, and be ready and willing to do so. The same is true of political leaders. It is part of the job of protecting the nation or state to have the capacity to deceive, which is what much of statecraft is about.  And it is even necessary for leaders to deceive their own people in order to preserve morale; too much truth could lead to despair, and a failure of will. Doctors know this same imperative: surgeons often choose not to reveal the true prognosis or all the details of treatment because many patients would opt to die rather than go through the pain of possible recovery. Truth, then, can be a very squishy concept. But there are degrees.

            We, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, are facing a threat like few in history. In such a situation, knowing the truth about the true danger that exists and about how to cope with it is far more important than usual. It’s all well and good for a leader to lie to obtain tactical advantage in a war. But when whole populations are at risk, and need to know the actual nature of the threat, the truth is critical. The best scientific (and science tries to, and should, always deal in the truth—as far as it can be known. Anything less is a total failure of the scientific enterprise.) evidence should always be foremost in any public presentation. The problem is, we have been led (I use the term loosely) for the past four years by a habitual, a pathological liar. Donald Trump has spent his entire life relying on his ability to flat-out lie, and then pretend, if caught, that it either didn’t matter, or was not what he meant, or insist that his words were meant as a joke, or sarcasm, or some other form of evasion or blame. And he has discovered through a massive body of experience, that he can nearly always get away with this. Enough people will be too lazy or too indifferent or too dismissive of the issue’s importance to give him the margin he needs to slide by with a lie once again. 

With the Covid-19 crisis, though, he has reached a new situation entirely. The problem is that he has not yet, it seems, recognized the novelty of his situation. And so, he has continued to lie, to fudge, to extemporize based on his impulses, and assure the nation that the crisis isn’t really a crisis, that it’s not as serious as his own scientists say it is, that it will soon be over, that it isn’t worth the cost of a plummeting economy, that he’s done everything wonderfully and made supplies available and cut off entry from China, or that he cannot be blamed because it’s someone else’s fault. And each of these lies, though no different from thousands of lies he’s told in the past with no consequences, are suddenly proving to have dire consequences. The death count steadily rises. The clamor for equipment for hospitals and first responders and for testing materials grows louder. The commentators who monitor these things, and who have always been so malleable to his deceptions, are suddenly using harsh language, apocalyptic language to describe his utter failure; his abysmal, unforgiveable failure to do the primary job for which he was elected: protect the nation and, especially, protect the people he has sworn to serve.

            Now, suddenly (as it must have done in Nazi Germany when Hitler’s lies about the genius of invading Russia, and the invincibility of his army were seen, their consequences seen, in massive destruction and death), the lies and the damage attendant on those lies are becoming apparent to anyone with eyes to see. Anyone, that is, can see the death count passing a thousand, then tens of thousands, now fifty thousand and more to come, on their screens. Anyone can see the businesses closed by the thousands, and the unemployed lining up in the millions. Everyone can gasp as this diabolic liar of a president recommends drinking bleach as a possible cure, following which bleach companies have to warn people not ever to believe such a preposterous thing. Everyone can see, and hear, and count the astonishing cost not just in income or prospects but in actual lives lost unnecessarily— unnecessary, that is, because of the absence of a little truth. 

            In short, despite what we all know about every human’s capacity to lie at times, about the absolute necessity to lie in some situations, the real consequences of presidential lying have suddenly become crystal clear. Truth really is a precious commodity in a crisis. And lying really is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. And the difference—being able to discern the difference, and especially being able to know when it is important to lie, and when it is important to tell the truth, no matter what the cost—is an indispensable quality even in our postmodern world. And it is doubly indispensable in a national leader. 

Too bad it has become so difficult, and even impossible for so many Americans—raised as we are on the George Washington myth, but increasingly cynical about its necessity—to tell the difference. 

Lawrence DiStasi