Chapter Nine: Lying - The Tangled Web
Chapter Nine: Lying - The Tangled Web
Trust and Distrust in Democracy
“Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!”
Sir Walter Scott, “Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field”1
Donald Trump declared at a rally that “One thing I can promise you this [sic]. I will always tell you the truth.”2 Well, perhaps not always. This is a promise he has not kept. According to the Washington Post, he “made 30,573 false or misleading claims as president.”3
Lying is not the property of one particular political party. Here is President Bill Clinton addressing the nation on January 26, 1998.4
And here is President Clinton addressing the nation on August 17, 1998.
Lying can have catastrophic consequences. The Democrats lied our nation into the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The Republicans lied us into the Iraq War in 2003. In the previous post, we saw how Senator Joe McCarthy lied the nation into paroxysms of fear about the supposed menace of Communist influence on internal American governmental affairs.
Novelists as well as historians alert us to the fact that lying is the royal road to dystopia. Recall the watchwords of The Party in 1984: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” “Freedom,” the novel’s protagonist Winston Smith says, “is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.”5 By the end of the novel, Smith is thoroughly defeated and writes: “Two and two make five.”6 The Party defined what is true and what is not.
The independent journalist I. F. Stone said, “All governments lie.”7 Lying has been going on for quite a long time, and odds are it is not going to stop anytime soon. So how best to approach this subject?
A useful goal is to explore when lies are apt to be told and to be especially vigilant in those circumstances. The best guide to this I have encountered is John J. Mearsheimer, a well-known political scientist at the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer wrote a thought-provoking book entitled Why Leaders Lie8 and has also lectured on the subject.9 What follows is not a comprehensive summary of this important book but rather some points which are particularly pertinent to us.
Mearsheimer is a political scientist specializing in international relations. He prides himself on being a clear-eyed realist. He was surprised to find that inter-state lies – lies that one nation tells another – are rare. He attributes this finding to his belief that states do not trust each other in the Hobbesian world which they inhabit. He cites Ronald Reagan’s warning that we must “trust, but verify.”10 In my opinion, this is another way of saying, “don’t trust blindly.”
Leaders are more likely to lie to their own people than to other leaders. An example which Mearsheimer does not mention but which is right on point is the “secret” bombing of Cambodia by the United States in 1969 and 1970, which was part of the Vietnam War. President Richard Nixon wanted to keep this secret from the American people because it was an escalation of which they probably would not have approved, and of which Congress might not have approved either. To state the obvious, it might have been a secret to us; but it was hardly a secret to the Cambodians who were being bombed.
Not all lies are to be condemned. An example of a “noble lie”11 can be found in the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. This was perhaps the closest the world ever came to a thermonuclear holocaust. President John F. Kennedy lied about the resolution of the crisis.
The Soviet Union began placing missiles armed with nuclear warheads in Cuba, at the time its client state, in 1962. Kennedy demanded that the missiles be removed. Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet dictator, struck one public bargain with Kennedy and another bargain in secret. The public bargain was that Khrushchev would remove the missiles if the United States committed not to invade Cuba.
The secret bargain was that Khrushchev would remove the missiles from Cuba if the United States removed its missiles from Turkey. Kennedy agreed but stipulated that this secret bargain had to remain unknown to the public. He understood that his concession to Khrushchev “would not play well with the American public, especially the political right. . . . [S]o he told the Soviets that they could not speak openly about the deal or else he would have to deny it and ultimately renege on it.” Suspicions did arise in the West that such a deal had been cut. When asked about it, Kennedy “lied and denied that there had been an agreement to take the Jupiters [the name of the missiles] out of Turkey.”12 This was a noble lie because it very well might have saved the world from a nuclear catastrophe almost unimaginable in its dimensions.
“Fearmongering” is a type of lie that leaders tell their own people. In international relations, fearmongering occurs because a leader believes his own people do not recognize a foreign policy threat. “The aim is to motivate the public to take the threat seriously and make the necessary sacrifices to counter it.”13 Fearmongering uses the trust of the people against them. If the ensuing war results in the “stunning victory” which characterized the first Gulf War in 1991,14 the leader will get away with his fearmongering, and all will be forgiven.
Mearsheimer discusses fearmongering in the context of international relations, but it is equally applicable to domestic relations. Joe McCarthy, the subject of last week’s post, was an effective fearmonger about the supposed infiltration of the American foreign policy establishment by hundreds of communists bent on the nation’s destruction.
Countries that do not share a border with an adversary are particular targets for fearmongering. “A distant enemy is likely to appear less frightening than a nearby enemy. . . .”15 In addition, if policy makers are trying to sell a preventive war to the public, one can expect fearmongering16 because the threat, if threat there be, is not imminent.
Democracies are more likely to be subjected to fearmongering than authoritarian regimes. That is because in democracies, public opinion is vital.
Why conduct policy in this manner if you know the truth will eventually be revealed? The reason is that “leaders who lie to their publics think they can get away with it.”17 If the truth does become known, it might not be for a very long time. Decades passed before the secret deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev ending the Cuban Missile Crisis was revealed.
What is the price of lying? It is very high. “Pervasive lying,” observes Mearsheimer, “will inevitably do grave damage to any body politic, because it creates a poisonous culture of dishonesty. Therefore, it makes eminently good sense for leaders and their fellow citizens to work to minimize the amount of lying that takes place in their country.” This observation is followed by an understatement: “This is not a simple task. . . .”18
To be effective, Mearsheimer believes that lying depends on trust. When lies are discovered, trust is sacrificed. Pervasive lying “might alienate the public to the point where it loses faith in democratic government and is willing to countenance some form of authoritarian rule.”19 These words were written in 2011. Is this not the situation in the United States today?
Where do these reflections leave us? Is there an antidote to the lies we will encounter in the future?
It is important to recognize the conditions under which leaders lie. The United States is a natural target because of our geography and because of the key role of public opinion in our democracy.
The United States is also a fertile field for liars because of what has been called the paranoid style in American politics20, evident from the founding of the Republic and indeed even prior to that. The Salem witch trials are a good example.
Just as there are realists in the study of international relations, it is good to be a realist in the understanding of domestic relations as well. A careful look at lying in American history suggests that the “trust, but verify” rule has merit. The nation trusted President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and believed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was justified. The result was the escalation in Vietnam. In 2003, the nation trusted President George W. Bush. We believed his claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The result was the war in Iraq.
Recently, we have been confronted with lies that damage our way of life. One example is Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
It must be emphasized again that lying is not the property of one political party. Consider the lie of Biden’s competence and his ability to continue in the nation’s highest office. As one commentator said when he was forced out of the race in July, “The bottom line is the man can’t string two sentences together. He shouldn’t be running the country today. He should certainly not be running the country four years from now. They completely lied to the American people. They tried to deny what was in front of all of our eyes and ears all along. It’s disgusting. It’s an utter betrayal, and for that alone he deserves to go.”21
A healthy dose of skepticism will serve us all well. This is particularly true when leaders try to sell the public on a preventive war in a far away place.
A healthy dose does not mean an overdose. Most people in government want to do the right thing most of the time.
Skepticism without cynicism is a hopeful path to follow.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4010/4010-h/4010-h.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LArHNiDWf38&t=95s
Fact Checker, “In four years, President Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims,” Washington Post, January 20, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgwTMV3EJe0 In Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage, 1999), Location 144, Sissela Bok observes: “Split Screens showed the President acknowledging in August what he had denied in his earlier, finger-pointing speech on January 26, each time addressing the public with what appeared utter sincerity.
George Orwell, 1984 (Pomodoro Books Online Edition, 2020), p. 174.
1984, p. 175.
Katherine J. McGarr, “Fox News’s handling of election lies was extreme but far from unusual,” Washington Post, March 7, 2023.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPe5f5dcrGE&t=2823s
Leaders, p. 28.
Leaders, pp. 66-67.
Leaders, p. 66-67.
Leaders, p. 22.
Leaders, p. 59.
Leaders, p. 61.
Leaders, p. 61.
Leaders, p. 58.
Leaders, p. 84.
Leaders, p. 85.
Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York: Vintage, 2008).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMuy4hvnCi8&t=1294s Krystal Ball on Breaking Points, “BREAKING: Biden OUT THIS WEEKENDPerReport,”