Knowing A Lie When I Hear One

WHEN YOU'VE BEEN A TEACHER for nearly forty years, you learn to recongize lies when you hear them. No matter how many thirteen year olds told me that the dog ate the homework, or that it was blown away in last night's neighborhood tornado, I succumbed to skeptism. Every now and then I encounter a thirty year old who tried, eighteen years go, to sell me on the dog ate my homework scam, and I invariably say something like "I never asked: did your dog vomit the homework back up?" Or, "Did any of your homework get dog eaten in high school?" Its usually good for a two way laugh, and a tinge of embarressment on the part the grown up former student. On election night last November, when then president Donald Trump stood before cameras, microphones, us the American people, and God, and told us that even though the vote count was imcomplete but beginning to add up in favor of Joe Biden, that he, Trump (he actually said "we", as if more than one person had been reelected) had won the election, my red flag went up, fast. I know a lie when I hear one. I've had plenty of practice. And I'm not the only one. Careful consideration, by anybody with a brain stem, reveals that everyone who heard the "big lie", including its originator, immediately recognized it as a lie, including all seventy five million people who voted for Trump, the same seventy five million who immeiately and to this day insist that the lie is not a lie. Everyone recognized the lie as a lie, but denied the recognition, and still do. Not only are all humans potential liars, most of us are actual liars, at least from time to time, and are equally capable of clinging to a lie, while feighing righteous honesty, for a very long time. That begs the question; how long will Trump and his supporters tenaciously cling to the lie? cling For Trump, the answer is obvious; his big lie will go with him to his grave. Of much more alarming concern are the seventy five million self deceived Americans. There's no use asking stupid questions like: "How can they live with themselves?" In that they do quite nicely. Not only that, but the best guess is that the majority of them will persist unto death, or, over the years, will slowly abandon the lie internally, while saying nothing about it to anyone, as it slowly recedes into irrrelevant memrory. The short American memory is well known and documented, and that applies to individuals and society alike. The best we can do is to rely on Goethe, who said: "We are never deceived, we only deceive ourselves".