Tell Me Lies

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking about lies and half-truths. I wrote another piece about lies but it was more concerned with someone choosing lies to better their position, and whether or not there were consequences. Currently, a larger movement around lies is afoot. Attempts to control what information is published, taught, how it is presented and what can be known, or acknowledged to exist, are exploding in our country and others. Those pushing these efforts claim they are protecting children, improving education, saving the nation or achieving other goals. In my opinion, none of those claims could be further from the truth.

I am no absolutist when it comes to telling the truth. There are many instances where a small, inconsequential lie helps to smooth interactions. Does someone want to know that the steak he grilled has the flavor and consistency of a flat-spotted Bridgestone? Does that proud couple really want to hear that their newborn bears a striking resemblance to Dick Cheney? Not everything requires total unvarnished truth. Like the above scenarios, sometimes a tastefully crafted lie is preferred, especially when the truth doesn’t offer more value and probably just unnecessary hurt.

Most other times the truth is necessary, and complete disclosure isn’t just informative but integral to the successful handling of the situation. As a matter of fact, so much of what we do in everyday life assumes and depends upon honesty. I just filled my car up with gas today and the pump was sealed with a label from the county. It certifies that I am actually getting a gallon of gas every time the pump registers that it delivered one. Food labels have a list of ingredients. For those with food allergies, the label has to tell the truth because doing otherwise could sicken or kill. Weights, measurements, quantities, certifications, conversion rates; these things and more need to tell us the truth or else society cannot function reliably.

Measures, contents and quantities, however, aren’t the things we worry about most when considering if they are truthful or not. Most of these items have governing bodies, a stated repeatable process to confirm claims, and additional processes to certify that what is claimed or labeled is exactly as it says it is.

By and large, the thing we worry most about is truthfulness in oral and written accounts of events. To my knowledge, there is no governing body that affirms that the claims made in accounts, whether matters of personal, criminal or national history, are sourced, substantiated and certified with a seal as true. Given that is the case, many different versions of the same account can float around at once, and people tend to choose the versions that suit their needs best. Which versions are those? Usually the ones that paint them, or whatever they support, in the best possible light. This happens in police statements, courts of law, autobiographies and recorded histories in general.

Even with our penchant to tell glowing and biased accounts about ourselves and the things we like, if more complete information is known it will come to light. Once it does, and more than one source provides consistent agreement and/or solid evidence to confirm it, that official record changes, whether we want it to or not. If we insist on pushing some tale about how we tore up the floor and everyone in the club stood back in envious wonder, those there who saw us doing the Elaine Dance are going to counter that account. Hard. The more we insist otherwise, the more we’ll be ridiculed and have those jerking, painful, sudden, seizure-like steps mimicked in our presence until we relent and accept the truth.

Our country has history it can be proud of. It also has history it is and should be ashamed of. It has the decimation of the indigenous by settlers, and the ultimate constraint of surviving Native Americans to landmasses that are a miniscule fraction of their original homesteads. There is the capture, kidnapping, enslavement, forced reproduction, sale, torture, rape and maiming of Africans brought to this country and the generations they gave rise to. There are the Jim Crow laws hastily enacted in former slave states to restrict Black rights, when Africans were freed after the Union triumphed over the Confederacy in the Civil War. It has the exploitation, exotification, targeted laws and immigration limits placed on Chinese immigrants. It adds the immigration quotas and hostility shown to the Irish, Italians, Poles and other later European immigrants seen by already settled Americans as “undesirable.” In addition, there is the property seizure and internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, many of whom were born here, none demonstrating allegiance to Japan but guilty only of looking Japanese and having a Japanese surname.

None of the above addresses the poor treatment of women, anyone not heterosexual or who doesn’t adhere to “traditional” gender norms and behaviors. It doesn’t scratch the treatment and cruel institutionalization of those with mental or physical limitations, or those who are neurodiverse. One can think of other examples and that is part of my point.

Why do I mention those awful chapters in our nation’s history? Is it because I hate America and am unpatriotic? There is a faction in our country that would see the above list and claim that. That faction is wrong. I mention them because they are true, all happened in our past and sometimes, oftentimes, resurrect themselves, either in the same way or in new ways. My knowledge of the past empowers me as a citizen and helps me to identify patterns, practices, expressions and trends that mimic those ugly and shameful periods from our past. Others who know the same history are similarly enabled to see the same. The more of us there are, preferably all of us, the better equipped we are to collectively issue warnings, take corrective actions wherever we are, and try to dissuade our fellow citizens from rushing headlong into the soiled, grimy, putrid alleys that our nation has already been.

There is a rash of so-called leaders going out of their way to make it impossible for new generations to know completely about their country. From school board members, to parents cherry-picking items for outrage, all the way to governors, they are interfering with the accurate and factual teaching of the nation’s history and composition. They are passing vague yet expansively punitive laws for what they call “indoctrination.” What is indoctrination? Often, they point to facts like those I mentioned above and claim they are being used to steer children’s thoughts in a certain direction. They despise kids knowing the things that won’t allow them to be told that this country has always been a shining paragon of justice and greatness, complete and perfect throughout its entire history. In their eyes, to do otherwise proves you do not love America. Anyone in breach is punished, branded as some type of degenerate and fired from their profession. Is that how one shows love? Is lying about and hiding something hurtful that someone has done, or is still doing, love? Or is that obfuscation merely enabling lies about wrong actions, while aiding and abetting the continuation of wrong and abusive behaviors?

If it isn’t shameful periods of the past, it is the acknowledgement of people with practices they dislike, those in the LGBTQ+ community especially. Many seem to think that by not mentioning the existence of LGBTQ+, that kids won’t see them, meet them or ever ask questions about them. Maybe they believe that by refusing to mention the existence of those in the LGBTQ+ population, that some kind of reverse Beetlejuice effect will happen, and refusing to acknowledge them will make them disappear. Whatever their reasoning, running afoul of their edicts will earn you the label of “groomer” and accusations that you are indoctrinating children. Mind you, this isn’t punishment for graphic descriptions of the mechanics in the performance of sexual acts. One can be punished solely for assigning books written by or about LGBTQ+, mentioning that they exist or using the accepted labels that describe them. As a matter of fact, Thom Hartmann of The Hartmann Report pointed out that in Georgia, you can be smeared by a parent claiming you are teaching pornographic material when reading a book, sold by the school’s book fair, that doesn’t mention anything except the importance of accepting other’s differences. Another group in history was very adamant about controlling which books were acceptable, what was in them and what were considered good topics for their nation to learn. Any guesses? Check this link to see if your hunch was correct.

This nation has a sickness: stubborn promotion of a narrow nuclear family ideal and the proliferation of simplistic, jingoistic cheerleading being passed off as patriotism.

Pretending that the nation is only comprised of a very narrow type of people you deem acceptable is not useful. Embracing the fact that there are people who look, speak, dress, eat, love or possibly worship differently than you is a strength. Accommodation and understanding are not weakness, they are skills and make the nation more powerful. Doing so encourages cooperation and this nation has shown that it is indomitable when those in it are moving and working together.

This country should not hide its failures and missteps but own and acknowledge them. Only acknowledgment of something that is wrong allows you to embark on correcting it, or making sure to keep from doing it. Knowing history of something prevents it from sickening or weakening you in the future. It is why doctors ask you about yours and your family’s health history. The things you and yours have encountered in the past, are things to acknowledge and guard against in the future, because you’ve shown a predisposition to being undermined by them in the past.

Good parents want the best for their children. If they see them doing something wrong and hurtful, they pull them aside, explain that it is wrong and teach them the correct way to behave. Do those parents point out what is wrong because they hate their children? No. They love their children and because they love them, they point out and correct destructive behaviors. Not doing so would make you question their love, not the other way around. We who want our nation to acknowledge, address and correct its faults have that same love.

Our country needs to move away from being brittle and only able to celebrate itself by telling itself lies, whether entire inventions or those by omission, and myths. We cannot respond to substantive criticism by plugging our fingers in our ears and loudly shouting, “USA! USA! USA!” Our nation is not the worst and in many ways is very good. It can still improve. Is that wrong? Athletes shoot for a personal best and after achieving it are ecstatic. Once they hit that, what’s next? Another personal best to raise the bar again. That is what being honest with ourselves, the condition of our nation, the practices in its past and the composition of its present does. It helps us reach a personal best and sets us on a path to reach a higher one. The truth may not always set you free but it can set the conditions to achieve that in the future, literally and figuratively.

The late Christine McVie is gonna close this one out. Peace.