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Posts Tagged ‘Lies’

The Believable Lie

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Remember that movie with Jim Carey playing a lawyer where all of a sudden he couldn’t lie to save his life? It was hysterical. His facial expressions alone were comedy genius.

The Flapper could lie with impunity. One time she announced at the supper table that she’d made the dessert herself! I remember being dumbfounded because I knew she had bought the cake at a bakery that very morning. Mind you, my foster parents never lied and I was taught at Sacred Heart School that lying was a sin, which is why this moment of time is embedded in my brain.

I just sat there in the dining room on Orchard Street, my ten year old self trying to make sense of my first major moral contradiction. Of course I didn’t contradict her, children were taught to respect their elders. If I could talk to my ten year old self, I’d tell her to wait patiently because soon I would be moving in with the Flapper. I’d exchange my black and white, absolutist home for a home of many colors, religions and shades of grey.

I wonder how much longer the GOP can continue to buy into the fire-hose of lies from this President.

“Some of Trump’s 2025 false claims were about consequential policy matters, others about trivial personal fixations. Some were sophisticated distortions about obscure subjects, others obvious fictions about issues average Americans experience in their daily lives. Many were ad-libbed or posted on social media, but many were scripted into prepared remarks. Aside from the staggering frequency and the trademark brazenness, what stood out was how repetitive Trump’s lying was. Though he regularly sprinkled in some fresh deception, he deployed a core batch of favored falsehoods again and again – undeterred by the fact that many of these claims had been publicly debunked for months or even years.” https://www.cnn.com/politics/fact-check-trump-false-claims-debunked

“…trademark brazenness.” In fact the Washington Post fact checker chronicled 30,573 lies in his first term! Many were repeated over and over again on Fox news. Mr T has continued lying to the American people – more than a hundred times in his first hundred days this year. How we managed to elect this man is still a mystery to me.

One of my favorite authors, Anne Tyler, was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning this past weekend. She said that in order to write fiction, one must be able to craft …“an extremely believable lie.” Which got me thinking, maybe that’s why I wanted to write non-fiction, because I knew I’d be no good at lying. But I can embellish a story like any good Irishwoman. And the Grands tell me I’m great at playing “One Night Ultimate Werewolf,” a card game of deceit where the object is to lie if you want to survive.

But if the Republicans want to survive as a party, they will have to stop lying to themselves. Because I’m pretty sure that most Republicans don’t actually believe Mr T’s lies. They just want to survive the next election cycle.

Hope your summer is off to a good start. It’s still wild weather here in Nashville, to be honest…

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The Facts Ma’am

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Public Policy, religion, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2018| Leave a Comment »

It’s the happiest season of all, right? But what to do if you’re not Christian, or even a lapsed-Catholic or Christian-light, or maybe Jewish or Muslim? Well, child psychologists can always tell us what to do, and lately they’ve been taking all the fun out of December.

First it was, teach your kids they don’t have to hug Aunt Fannie – that relative you see maybe once or twice a year who insists on a hug and a kiss. And now, we are being told to spill the goods on Santa – don’t lie to your kids about Santa!

“Do you believe in Santa Claus Mommy?” the Love Bug asked my daughter in the car the other day. Why do they always come up with such earth-shattering questions in the car? Of course I wanted to know what she said, but the Bride only said she stalled, making me feel like somehow I’d failed. Because even though Bob and I were raising our children in the Jewish faith, I never gave up on Santa Claus

I mean I didn’t leave him milk and cookies. We didn’t have any naughty elves sneaking around our bookshelves. There were no blinking trees in our living room either. And they never knew when Santa would arrive, silently gliding down our chimney – it might happen during Hannukah, or maybe on Christmas morning. But I felt it viscerally, that memory of a big, kind guy in a red suit visiting children all over the world to fulfill their wishes. And I wanted to keep that magic alive in my family.

But according to this BBC article, if a child is old enough to ask about Santa, they are old enough for the truth. No, Virginia, there is nobody.

“You shouldn’t lie about Santa because you are encouraging your children, usually with made-up proof, to believe a morally ambiguous lie. I’m not alone in being devastated learning of my parents’ elaborate deceit about Santa, leaving me to wonder what other lies they had told.

Santa supposedly encourages imagination but, as noted in this article, and others, you’re really asking children to suspend criticality and believe a fiction. As this piece suggests, fantasy and imagination work because we choose to believe what we know isn’t true. Far from promoting wonder, the Santa story encourages children to be consumers of others’ ideas.” http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20181211-why-you-shouldnt-lie-to-your-children-about-santa

Today is the sixth anniversary of the shooting at Newtown Elementary School. Those children, who were the same age as my grand daughter, will never have the chance to ask about Santa Claus. They will never go caroling again with their parents. When our government failed to pass any meaningful gun control legislation after that, long before Sandy Hook, I lost my faith again. Only this time, it was with our country.

Last night we read about a 7 year old Guatemalan girl who died of dehydration and exhaustion at the border of New Mexico. She was in OUR custody with her father for more than 8 hours before seizures began. This actually happened last week, according to the Washington Post:

“The ACLU blamed “lack of accountability, and a culture of cruelty within CBP (Customs and Border Patrol)” for the girl’s death. “The fact that it took a week for this to come to light shows the need for transparency for CBP. We call for a rigorous investigation into how this tragedy happened and serious reforms to prevent future deaths,” Cynthia Pompa, advocacy manager for the ACLU Border Rights Center, said in a statement.”  

So maybe we should tell our kids the truth, always. Because buying into a fairy tale, quasi-religious belief that leaves Mrs Claus at home in the North Pole while her husband gets all the credit for one night’s work does seem antiquated. Maybe we must be brutally honest with ourselves first. And not expect falsehhoods to turn into facts simply because a great, orange-headed beast keeps repeating them…

It’s almost like selling someone a bill of goods about fossil fuels, and promising to fulfill all your wishes, just because you have your name on a few buildings.

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Liar, Liar

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Journaling, tagged , , , , , , , on June 17, 2017| Leave a Comment »

We’re back home in the mountains, with birds singing and ethical questions abounding. Yesterday I saw Dr MacDreamy about my incessant back pain, and picked up an April 3rd copy of Time in his office titled, “Is Truth Dead?” All week I’ve been listening to pundits discuss whether Comey or Mr T were lying. Just that question… who to believe? And Bob and I listened to a podcast on the nine hour drive from Nashville on This American Life titled, “Mr Lie Detector.” https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/618/mr-lie-detector

Turns out lie detectors don’t work, so why are some companies still using them?

And to round out this theme, I was reading quite a bit of “Betty Bunny Didn’t Do It” by Michael Kaplan last week to the grandchildren. It was one of the free books that are sent via snail mail to all new parents (for the first five years) in TN from Dolly Parton’s “Imagination Library.” http://usa.imaginationlibrary.com

Well of course Betty Bunny DID do it, break a lamp that is, and her attempts at a cover-up only dig her deeper and deeper into hot water. It’s a great age-appropriate lesson in honesty. But let’s face it, who hasn’t lied about something? I was taught it’s a sin to lie, but to spare someone’s feelings it’s “a little white lie” that doesn’t count… Mixed message or what?

The Flapper lied about food all the time. Since she was a busy working Mom, and also an excellent cook, she couldn’t help but take credit for making the whole meal if we had company. When someone would ask, “Did you make this?” Her reply would always be, “Of Course!” Even if the muffins or cake came from a bakery. I distinctly remember the first time I heard this, I was dumbfounded since my foster parents and the nuns had me convinced lying was evil.

But my Mother lied with such enthusiasm we all believed her, even if we saw the package in the kitchen. Sometimes, on the weekend, she would go all out and bake a pie, but everyone knew she wouldn’t actually buy a pie.

She also lied about her age, and her hair color, but of course I thought everyone did that!

Bob and I are true believers in brutal honesty. We taught our kiddos not to lie to us, ever! We started telling them, probably around age 6 or 7, that in the future things may happen, but whatever happened if they told us the TRUTH, they would never get in trouble. Trouble with a capital T (consequences such as being unplugged or losing car privileges) happened when we found out they were using truthiness on us, deliberately obfuscating the truth, lying. And I’m pretty sure this approach paid off, though I’m also sure the statute of limitations on some teenage crimes and misdemeanors is about to run out!

Today we have an outright liar in the White House. He couches his texts in uncertainty – using modal verbs like, “may,” “might,” or “must.” He makes his followers think it’s possible that undocumented immigrants voted in the last election, even though he was proven wrong. He must believe his own lies, like any good paranoid he believed Obama was “wire tapping” Trump Tower. Having Mr Comey call out that nonsense must have stung; not bowing down in all his 6’8″ majesty of manhood to poor, pitiful Mr T, to pledge his loyalty and allegiance? No, so long Mr FBI Director. “You’re Fired!”

Mr T calls his version of the truth, “truthful hyperbole.” Kellyanne gave us a whole new lexicon with “alternative facts.” Facts are facts, like a deal is a deal is a deal! Just because Mr T believed that President Obama was born in Kenya did not make it so. And even if Mr T fires his special prosecutor Mr Mueller, the evidence, the facts about Russia will continue to come out.

Whatever your feelings are, and most of us are on a spectrum of honesty from being horribly brutal to trying to save someone’s feelings, we can all admit it’s never a good idea to lie under oath. Or for that matter, for public officials to lie to us. Lying about having sex with “that woman” is a different level, a whole different category of lies. It’s trying to save face, save a family unit, maybe even save that poor intern Monica.

But knowing that hackers interfered with our election and denying you knew anything about your chief advisors dealings with Russia, such a huuuge smart businessman like you Mr T, and we are expected to buy this? Didn’t you invite the Russians to hack Hillary’s emails in a debate? Oh Republicans, give them a good sex scandal anytime, but win an election at all costs, am I right?

Calling this a “witch hunt” really? Witches were innocent women, and you sir, are no innocent man. You are saying and doing things that would make you the opposite of innocent! When our reluctant Chief Executive/Golfer reads the National Enquirer and Breitbart News and watches Fox TV all the damn time – and believes it all?!

Mr T can’t negotiate his way out of this fast moving train of facts. Like Nixon, he can fire his staff willy nilly, but the truth will come out. His lack of credibility has diminished our leadership in the world. Right now, I’m wondering what he traded North Korea for to get our UVA student, Otto Warmbier, back.

It’s been hazy, hot and humid this week and Bob likes it chilly in the house. He asked me this morning if I turned the AC up last night? Who, freezing cold moi?

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