“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” — William Shakespeare

George Santos. Hershel Walker. Donald Trump. These three guys deserve inclusion into the Liars’ Hall of Fame, for the outrageous false claims they’ve made, and the sheer audacity of their falsehoods.

Santos was newly and narrowly elected to the United State House of Representatives as a Republican from New York.  He claimed, wrongly, that he graduated from two different institutions of higher learning.  According to the schools, he did not.  Nor did he ever work for Goldman Sachs, as he claimed.  Or Citi Group, as he also claimed.  He stated multiple times that he is Jewish.  Confronted about that assertion, he admitted he is not Jewish, but Catholic. In an adorable turn of phrase, he later explained he is “Jew-ish”.  Too cute?  Santos has described some of his statements as “embellishments”.    
Hershel Walker, defeated candidate to represent Georgia in the United States Senate, said, falsely, that he had worked as a law enforcement officer.  He even flashed a badge.  Not a real badge.  Did he think it was a real badge?  If so, he would have been mistaken, but not lying.  Such might be indicative of other areas of concern, of course.

Hershel also reported, falsely, that he had graduated from the University of Georgia.  With a 4.0 GPA.  Not so much.  He never graduated, according to University of Georgia. Donald Trump lied so much as 45th President of the United States that the Washington Post published a tally of verifiable lies.  So did the New York Times.  So did Fact Checker, citing the number 30,507 documented lies during his four year presidency.

He said, and still says, the election in which he was defeated by Joe Biden in 2022, was rigged.  A total of 61 lawsuits were filed, and none of those prevailed.  He knew, and knows, that he lost that election.  But he still makes the claim.  He started getting national attention by claiming that Barack Obama was not an American citizen.  After years, he “walked that back”.   Some say his biggest lie was that he was a successful businessman.  The recent public release of tax filings during the years he was president show he got a great deal of money from Daddy Trump, and grossly mismanaged it, for years.  It’s no wonder he didn’t want his taxes returns out (despite promising he would do so).    

Those guys are all Republicans, but Dems lie too.  Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal claimed to have been in the war in Vietnam, when his military records show he never left US soil during his military service.  He did serve in the United States Marine Corps Reserve.  He served during the Vietnam War Era.  Not in Vietnam.  Richard Blumenthal, according to his records, and by his own later admission, did not serve in Vietnam. 

Most people do, at some point, lie.  The DSM – the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Illnesses and Disorders – lists compulsive lying as a pathology.  As a disorder, compulsiveness and chronicity are what separates the condition from ordinary lying. 

But these three men, Trump, Walker, and Santos, lie frequently, apparently compulsively and pathologically.  And, to be clear, they don’t do this very well.  Making claims that are easily disproven is, to be blunt, stupid and/or crazy.  For example, if you were never a police officer, don’t say you were.   Don’t say a rival, born in Hawai’i, is not a U.S. citizen.  Don’t say you contributed to charities unless you contributed to charities.     

As a civil society, do we owe each other truthfulness?  Sure.  For the most part.  Most religious traditions seem to think so.  One of the commandments, revered by all the Abrahamic faiths, i.e., Judaism, Christianity and Islam, expressly addresses and prohibits “bearing false witness.”

Our legal system is based on truth telling, and certain types of lies hold the possibility of negative consequences.  Ethical behavior favors truth telling.  Should our elected leaders play it straight with constituents? 

We trust that most people tell the truth most of the time. Our amazing communication skills separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.  But, as Kurt Vonnegut writes in Galapagos, we humans have managed to communicate falsely in a big way.  He imagines an earth in which evolution is re-visited, after a world-wide disaster. 

We recognize that advertisers “embellish” the qualities of the products they want to influence us to buy.  We accept that politicians seeking office will “spin” communications to bend truth toward more favorable accounts.  As will media.  When 2^nd Battalion, 9^th Marines got hit, by the North Vietnamese Army, up by the DMZ, back in 1967, the Detroit News reported there were “light casualties”.  Seemed more like heavy casualties to me; but that wasn’t “embellishment”; just a rather subjective impression.  My dad saved the article for me.  We had a laugh over it.  Kind of an odd laugh, admittedly.

I think it is incumbent on us, as citizens, to try to keep ourselves informed, and to expect truthfulness from our elected representatives.  We can express our concerns with our votes, and with the generosity of political contributions, or lack thereof.