Truth is the first casualty of politics. Politicians warp it, distort it, and spin it like Whirling Dervishes. When all else fails, they simply lie their way around it, all the while claiming a fantasy moral high ground where it is perpetually Orwell’s 1984 – truth is fiction and fiction is truth.

A sentient person should expect a certain amount of this. After all, it is a candidate’s job to present themselves in the best possible light. But, there is a huge difference between good lighting and whispering lies from the shadows.

Sometimes facts are both truthful and verifiable. You can argue 1+1=9422, but that doesn’t make it true or a fact. When the fact is so immutable as to render it above challenge, some simply lie. “But it does equal 9422! Most leading mathematicians say so.” No they didn’t.

Pulling Saturn from its Orbit

Perhaps the most time-tested, hardest-to-clarify, and in some ways least honest lie is a spin so powerful it pulls Saturn from its orbit. People usually call this “interpretation”. No doubt almost everything has some degree of real interpretation, but quoting words without also quoting lines before and after that show an opposite meaning is not interpretation. Cherry picking only the facts that agree with your position while vigorously denying an opponent’s isn’t interpretation either – though it is depressingly frequent. Stephen Colbert calls these “facts” truthiness.

Barack Obama acknowledged in a recent 60 Minutes interview that his campaign sometimes goes over the top. You have to give him props for that. It is a limb most candidates avoid like dangling from it with a drunken lumberjack and sharp chainsaw. But, acknowledgement isn’t an apology or a pledge to give up on cooking the books of truth.

“Do we see sometimes, us going overboard in our campaign, the mistakes that are made or the, you know, areas where there’s no doubt someone could dispute how we are presenting things? That happens in politics,” Obama said. Ironically, that was a totally indisputable truth, but one that doesn’t excuse his participation.

Sadly, the President went on to tell another untruth. “The truth is of the matter is most of the time we’re having a vigorous debate about the vision of the country.” However, if lies and distortion constitute having a “vigorous debate about a vision of the country” we’re having it with cheap, dime store, non-prescription bifocals.

Michele Bachmann comparing the use of census data to throw Japanese into concentration camps during WWII is “factual” as it goes, but……

“If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps,” she said about one of the most unfair and egregious acts in American history.

Would I Lie to You?

So far, so good, but then Bachmann implies there is a plot without actually saying the words, “There is a plot.” (NOTE: Some reports claim she explicitly talked of a plot in other interviews, but I can’t completely verify they are true). But carefully read Bachmann’s language and you see some heavy handed dervishing. So heavy handed that even Fox’s Megyn Kelly, not exactly a hostile interviewer, doesn’t ask to clarify what she means.

“I’m not saying that that’s what the administration is planning to do,” she said as she outlined a plan. “But I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps.” Strictly factual? Yes. Sublime truthiness? Um, decide for yourself.

There isn’t a person in the species that hasn’t lied, even Mother Theresa. It is as human a trait as opposable thumbs. At the risk of being accused of moral relativism, not all lies are bad. However, they are still lies and a fully true answer might be hurtful, but a more morally correct one. But, we don’t live in utopia where everything is orderly, clean, and unambiguous. Haters gonna hate, actual human beings gonna lie.

Dishonesty and its morality are at the crossroads of every society. Sometimes, as in modern-day America, the lies get too big. The lies come too easy, we believe them too easily, and we all enable them. Lies also have consequences.

Recognizing there will be lies until cockroaches exclusively reclaim the planet is a first step toward making things better. So are thinking carefully, investigating fully, admitting mistakes and obfuscations, and holding the feet of at least the biggest, baddest liars to the fire are big steps too.

Would I lie to you?

Cross posted at The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks! More than politics, more than pop culture & humor.

In a rare display of common sense and insight, Fox’s Megyn Kelly clearly offered some facts and questioned misperceptions about mental illness as it applies to heinous acts like the killings in Colorado. Over the weekend she repeatedly asked two legal analysts about whether the killer was mentally ill and whether the killer could fake mental illness in order to set up an insanity plea at his trial or as a way to lessen punishment during the penalty phase, providing he is convicted (Remember, despite the overwhelming evidence, he is innocent until proven guilty.). Both guests were steadfast in saying he is definitely not mentally ill and an insanity defense was pure poppycock.

True madness is rarely clear or obvious (Photo: Dima Bushkov / Flickr)

It is hard to believe, and virtually unheard of, that people who kill in such numbers are not mentally ill to some degree. People, even mentally ills ones, don’t usually commit mass murder for the thrill or “fun” of it. Something drives them to it like the terrible demons in an ill wretch’s mind.

The short answer to the, “could it be a fake” question is yes. Clearly the gunman is very intelligent, the act carefully planned, and he had some expectation of his survival. The guests believed that since there appeared to be rationality to the planning and execution of the shootings the shooter must unquestionably be faking insanity. There is no such sureness in cases like this.

The Appearance of Rationality Not the Same as Being Rational

My grandmother and mother were both schizophrenic and my sister is bipolar. I’ve had years of up close and personal experience with the severely mentally ill and the doctors who treat them. The first thing I can tell you is the appearance of rationality is not the same as being rational.

Despite the widely held notion that mental illness is a simple off/on switch – you are either psychotic or sane – nothing could be further from the truth. Street corner screechers notwithstanding, many severely mentally ill victims are not always continuously psychotic. It is not unusual for them to slip in and out of psychotic periods.

Even in the grip of full psychotic episodes, they may appear perfectly rational depending on how that plays with their delusions and self-protective needs. This is one thing that makes it so difficult to get them help or successfully complete therapy.

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