One Small Voice: About the kinds of lies and Liar in Chief

There are two kinds of lies. Lies of omission and lies of commission.

A lie of omission is when a person fails to give information to someone, thus allowing that person to believe something that is not true. For example, a person is involved in a car accident. The investigating officer asks the driver for a statement. The driver says “I don’t know how I hit that other car. It came out of nowhere!”

He neglects to tell the officer that he was texting his boss when the accident occurred. The driver omitted pertinent information hoping to bolster his innocence. A lie by virtue of the omission of fact.

A lie of commission is when a person proclaims an out-and-out untruth… “The dog ate my homework!” “The devil made me do it!”

I dare say that all of us have, at one time or another, been guilty of both.

Society has gone through the exercise of establishing degrees of the vileness of our lies. There are “white” lies, the lies we tell so as not to hurt someone’s feelings. (“Does this dress make my ass look big?” “NO!”) There are lies of necessity, the lies we tell to fend off disaster. (“Of course I love you! Now, please, just hand me the gun.”)

We call these lies justified, and a very good case can be made for that.

Then there are plain old bald-faced lies. Lies with no redeeming qualities. Lies intended to deceive, to demean, to cause harm (sometime irreparable) and emotional pain.

(“He steals from work.” “She’s had her boobs done.” “He beats his wife.” “She slept with me!”)

What does the act of lying tell us about human beings? What does it say about the person who is lied to? What does it say about the person who does the lying?

I have no degree in psychology.  I don’t even watch Dr. Phil. But I have been lied to, and, lately, I’ve seen and heard lots of lying. From these I draw some observations.

Any time I have been lied to by someone whose intention was deception, I have been offended. The liar has said, in essence, that he or she considers me stupid (too dumb to see through the deception), considers me beneath him or her (not worthy of dignity or respect), and considers my feelings of no consequence.  It is the ultimate act of debasing me, short of murdering me.  When I am lied to I am completely laid low.

Now let’s put the shoe on the other foot. What does that lie tell me about the liar? First, the liar is not a very good judge of me. I’m not stupid. If I don’t see through the ruse initially, I will eventually call the liar on it. I will not accept the falsehood. The liar will have to account for it sooner or later.

Second, the liar doesn’t have much in the way of compassion for me. The liar doesn’t recognize that my mere humanness is worthy of at least some dignity and respect. That my feelings are of consequence and should have been considered before the lie was told.

But there’s one more thing that the liar has told me about him or herself. He has told me that he cannot be trusted. He can’t be trusted with common decency, to be sure. Nor can he be trusted, in general, with fact. Everything he or she says is now suspect. And the more lies that are told, the less and less credence can be placed in even the simplest statements the liar makes.

Years ago, you may remember, Saturday Night Live comedian Jon Lovitz did a recurring character called the compulsive liar. He was funny.  He claimed he was married to young, alluring Morgan Fairchild. Everything he claimed he’d done was the biggest, the best, the most ingenious.

“Yeah, that’s the ticket!” he’d proclaim after each outrageous lie. It was funny because we all have known someone, or of someone, who caught the fish that was this big! (See my arms stretched out to their limits?) We have all known someone whose every experience pushed the limits of credibility.

All of those people we have known were never totally believable. We didn’t trust that veracity of most of the things they said. We tended to hold those people in some degree of lower esteem than our other friends and acquaintances because of the untruthfulness. In the big scheme of things these folks became clowns, caricatures, not serious people.  They were entertainment, nothing more. Just like the character Jon Lovitz portrayed.

This is what is happening with our current president. I know, you Trump defenders will deflect with “what, you think other presidents haven’t lied?” Of course I don’t think that. But none of them have lied with the frequent, blatant arrogance of The Donald.

With each passing day he has become the buffoon of political cartoons. He has become the exaggerated caricature of his untruths. Not just at home, but abroad as well. With every passing day and every spoken lie, he is trusted less and less, and scorned more.

What The Donald doesn’t seem to understand, or, simply, doesn’t seem to care about, is that this reputation as Liar in Chief is irreversible. He will wear the stigma of liar for the remainder of his days.