Donald Trump appears to be a liar, says this Washington Post article. Starting with, he’s not worth $10 billion. He says he’s not prejudiced, but he has a long history of using racial stereotypes as well as prejudice. He says he’s self-funding his campaign, but most come from others, some of his funds are loans, and his biggest expenses pay his own businesses. And he has fabricated several of the big stories that he has used in his campaign, such as the thousands of Muslim cheering on 9/11. Some people tell me that Trump is just too narcissistic to know he’s lying. He was once worth $10 billion, he started out self-funding his campaign and he’s often not prejudiced.
Still, a lie is a lie, and instead of apologizing for them he repeats them. It doesn’t bode well for his potential presidency. Bush’s lies ended up destabilizing the Middle East, caused traumas to millions of lives, and cost us trillions of dollars.
Is Hillary Clinton any better about lies? Clearly she lied about the Bengazi emails. And again, she keeps white-washing them instead of saying they were a mistake. She lied publicly about the reason for the Benghazi attacks, but these seemed to be an intentional strategy generated by the administration. Perhaps it was done to lessen the chance that a flood of radical moslems would join the fight- but the culture of allowing lies for “national security” doesn’t allow us to know.
This article says that China lies about the basic promises made to Britain about Hong Kong, that it wouldn’t send police.
Those abducted include five men connected with a Hong Kong publisher that was working on a tell-all biography of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Abductions apparently took place in Hong Kong, though China had promised Britain it would not send police there, and Thailand, a neighboring and (ostensibly) sovereign nation. One missing man held a Swedish passport, another a British passport, but those proved no deterrent either.
And here’s an article that says the CIA deceives it’s own employees.
The common link in all these is the belief that the end justifies the means. Often, lying works. But it has its costs and, as we saw with Bush’s lies, the costs can be huge. And their lies add to the opposition Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton face, adding huge costs to their billion-dollar campaigns.
Even if our political system can withstand all the lies, it shouldn’t be built on lies. And currently it is.
The lie it’s built on is that the necessary political accountability we need can happen in elections. It’s a lie. And it allows all sorts of other lies. Since we don’t have a system with which we can truly hold politicians accountable, they can lie and not be held accountable for them.
We justify this lie by wanting America to be good, wanting to preserve the myth that our founders did a good job. America being good is the ends. We pretend it justifies lying about it.
The truth is that good and bad are relative. America was great in the beginning. Then it was bad, people lacked fundamental rights. Then it was good after the bill of rights was added. Then it was bad and the next amendment was added.
Is America really good or bad? No. Good and bad are relative to what we want. Rather than worry about judging America, let’s just concentrate on solving problems and improving our lives and our future.