“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 2nd Battalion, 9th 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.
GEEZ!! You forgot to the unheraled hall of fame champion of them all, Joe Biden. The reason the media does not keep track of his lies is they are so varied and there are so many one can hardly keep track of them all. And they did not start when he became president. Call them fanciful tales, brain farts or homespun stories, they are so numerous, Biden makes Trump look like a neophyte,
I agree, but Cognitive Dissonance is a real thing. President Trump may very well be the most vetted person in history, but many are still rubbing their hands together gleefully (i.e., James Carville), believing they are “going to get him THIS time!” He’s been out of office for 2 years now, and there are those who are still obsessed with finding something–anything–to confirm their biases. (One would think they would have found something by now?) Crimes which they accuse President Trump can be clearly seen in many others if one chooses to really research and not take the word of the MSM as gospel.
Like Anne Frank, I truly believe that most people are “good at heart,” but the thought that our own government can be so corrupt is too much to comprehend. If they can put all the evils on President Trump, they don’t have to face the fact that powerful, corrupt people place other corrupt people in office and control them through blackmail and bribes across every agency. It’s not a conspiracy theory to wonder why Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison for TRAFFICKING CHILDREN, but no one on her client list has been indicted. Go down THAT rabbit hole, and it makes a sick kind of sense. “But..but there are pictures of Epstein with Trump!” (who was those only one who helped build a case against Epstein the first time he went to jail.) Add Weiner’s laptop and images that were so diabolical that they made cops vomit–oh, and 9 out of 12 who viewed it are now dead. You won’t see that in MSM (other than the NY Post) because they are also controlled.
Sadly, most WON’T dig for the truth because it’s unspeakable and the REAL lies are much more comfortable. It’s much easier to tell the emperor how nice his new clothes look.
Go ahead and laugh, TDS sufferers. It makes me cry.
Mr Morass
This sums it all up
“John Kelly didn’t have high expectations about Donald Trump when he joined the White House as chief of staff, but he was still shocked by what he found after joining the administration.
The retired U.S. Marine Corps general joined the White House halfway through Trump’s first year, and New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt reported what Kelly learned about the former president and his abilities.
“So when Kelly came in as chief of staff, he thought that the problem around Trump was that he was not staffed properly and they needed to create a process around him, and that’s what the chaos of the first six months of the administration was about,” Schmidt said. “But when Kelly comes in as chief of staff, what he realizes is that the problem is not just the fact that there’s not a process and that he’s not being staffed as well as he could, but that Trump himself was the problem, that Trump was far dumber and immoral and ignorant and lazy than he ever thought he was.”
And so tell me, how much better Biden is doing. LOL!! Pull out from Afghanistan? Great planning and process there. Current economy? Some great advisers and process there. Our Southern Border? Hey, they have a handle on that one, right? I could go on, but you must have gotten the picture by now.
Gotta love the left, Biden could nuke Nebraska tomorrow and nearly half the country and most of the folks on Town broadcast would say “So glad Trump isnt President”. The dumbest and least truthful person to ever be President of the United States IS the President right now and they are still waste bandwith, obsessed with Trump. They want to investigate literally every aspect of Trump and ignore the blatantly obvious crime and graft of the Biden family. Trump is an egotistical idiot, rambling moron and was a grossly ineffective leader. Even so, Biden makes him look like Stephen Hawking.
For the love of God, please take a breath and a truly objective look at what is in the White House now! An empty suit barely able to hold a conversation being led to the teleprompter. A mumbling national embarrassment.
Give it a break. Trump is not the President anymore and he will never be President again. Thankfully, Biden won’t be getting another term either.
Well, at least Trump accomplished a few good things. Illegal immigration was held to a minimal amount, there were the Abraham Accords, China was inching toward fairer trade practices, the Caliphate was destroyed, COVID vacines were developed in record time, Syria was punished for their use of chemical weapons and as obnoxious as he was, he was not bullied into playing Santa Claus with our supposed allies. I would cringe when I would hear him speak, but a few good things happened despite the constant chaos. And I think he unfairly had to accept the burden of blame for a pandemic that no one had a clue on how to manage. But, as Harry always said “The Buck stops here.” There was still a aura of chaos after he left and until mother nature calmed the outbreak………….. On the other hand, I really can’t think of one significant accomplishment by Biden…………That being said, you are right. Many need to quit distracting themselves from the comfort of Trump bashing and assume some essence of reality, with regard to who we now have in the White House. I know it would be painful without the TDS crutch, but remaining oblivious will not make things better for the next time we have to pick a president.
We live in an era of “alternative facts” . A phrase introduced by Special Advisor to The President, Kellyanne Conway on the Jan 22, 2017 broadcast of Meet the Press. She used it to explain then Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s statement that the crowds for the 2017 inauguration of President Trump were the “largest ever”.
Unfortunately alternative facts has morphed into alternative truth. The Big Lie of the 2020 election being “stolen” is the best example that comes to mind. The best because it’s been used to raise millions of dollars for too many GOP candidates to count.
Another is all MI public schools have incorporated Critical Race Theory into their high school curriculums. Isn’t even on the agenda in a large majority of school districts. Lastly, laughable but frightening example of how social media can spread “alternative truth” is Furries getting litter boxes in their high school bathrooms myth that spread like wildfire. Never happened but it was repeated by political figures and voters as an example of America’s decline due to liberal politicians throughout the 2022 campaign season.
Mr Moras is condemning President Biden for following through with the US Troop withdrawal ordered by President Trump that was ordered AFTER the Nov 2020 election. Imagine that. The candidate I suspect Mr Moras voted for President Donald J Trump ordered the troop withdrawal.
Mr. MacDougal sounds critical of former President Trump now but he is the same commenter who was praising President Trump’s promotion of using a malaria drug hydroxychlorolquine to treat COVID patients and praising doctors at Detroit Medical Center for administering the drug to patients who requested it. But then the FDA found the use of that drug was exacerbating cardiac issues (heart attacks) in patients whose respiratory systems were already failing. None of the doctors who were reportedly going to publish a paper on their treatment would sign it for submission to medical journals after the FDA banned its off label use.
MacDougal wants to belittle the current President but given his unbridled support for GOP candidates, he most likely voted for every election denier candidate the GOP had on the ballot for state and Federal legislative races. Another faux patriot who supports people who want the country forget January 6 2021 when President Trump and others wanted to ignore the Constitution because former VP Biden won and Trump wanted to stop The Electoral College from certifying the election.
More Alternative Truth………
Well done, Couchman. Let me add to it. New findings from psychologists at universities in California and Georgia and published in the journal “Cognitive Research” show that the more often a statement — regardless of its truthfulness — is repeated, the more emphatically it’s believed.
The researchers noted:
“Repeated information is often perceived as more truthful than new information. This finding is known as the illusory truth effect, and it is typically thought to occur because repetition increases processing fluency. Because fluency and truth are frequently correlated in the real world, people learn to use processing fluency as a marker for truthfulness.”
While modern science is affirming this truism, it’s been in use a long time. In the past century, for example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called out his day’s Republicans for using what we today call the Big Lie around several issues. Running for re-election in 1944, he said:
“The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, ‘Mein Kampf,’ written by Hitler himself.
“The technique was all set out in Hitler’s book — and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan. According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible — if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again.”
Sounds much like the strategies outlined in the Liberal Bible of Saul Alinsky.
Mr. Moras is condemning Biden for having 9 months to plan the Afghan withdrawal and still managing to create a nightmare, resulting in Americans left behind and several deaths.
George Santos was who got me thinking about liars and lying. Hershel popped up, due to his recent failed senatorial campaign in Georgia. Of course, nothing on this topic should exclude Donald. Richard Blumenthal got some ink too. But George Santos did capture my attention.
Remember Dem. Congressman Anthony Wiener? He didn’t fare too well with Speaker Pelosi, But it looks like Speaker McCarthy will be much more forgiving of George Santos.
Santos, the dolt, should have known that he could not get away with his lies. And now it has come to light that Santos’ campaign was funded by Dark Money from a Russian Oligarch. But, I suppose, like many other politicians, he felt it would be of little consequence if he were found out. Blumenthal has kept getting elected, even after he lied for over a decade and was found out.
I almost have to assume that politicians believe the electorate wants to be lied to. Both Jimmy Carter and Dukakis both suffered for trying to be honest. And the imfamous “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”, hardly put a dent in Clinton’s popularity.
And although I find it outrageous, those types of lies are nothing compared to some and their consequences. Gulf of Tonkin, Weapons of Mass Destruction and a host of others that were cause for death and destruction.
We have come to accept lies from our elected representatives as part of politics. Sad but true.
It is sad, Mr. Moras. It needn’t be true. There are examples of truth telling, but they seem to be few, and getting fewer.