September 22, 2004
Lies
I don’t know if there’s more lying nowadays or just more ease of communication that makes it seem that way.
Back when it took as long as two weeks even to learn who’d been elected president of the US, it surely took as long for a lie to make the rounds. Maybe this made it seem different, like maybe we were more truthful then. I’d like to think that we were.
I can’t remember there ever being a seeming Culture of Lies — a literal ambiance of dishonesty — like there is now so that lying seems to have become the MO. Everybody does it. Presidents. CEOs. Cardinals. Children. And we just give an indifferent shrug. Unless, of course, you happen to be a highly successful woman of whom we can make an example.
The truth-tellers have become the outcasts. A woman whose son was killed in Iraq wore a T-shirt at a Laura Bush rally that said, The President Killed My Son. She was hustled out by the Secret Service and thrown into the local slammer for trespassing.
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” With one exception, Lord.