May 28, 2008
Deceit
Bob Herbert of the New York Times, writing after the tragic death of Pulitzer prize-winning journalist David Halberstam, said, “If there was one thing above all else that David taught us, it was to be skeptical of official accounts, to stay always on guard against the lies, fabrications, half-truths, misrepresentations, exaggerations and all other manifestations of falsehood that are fired at us like machine-gun bullets by government officials and others in high places, often with lethal results.” To illustrate a contemporary “for instance,” he added that, “A government that will lie about the tragic fates of honorable young Americans like Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch will lie to the public about anything.”
One of the presidential press secretaries in our present administration has just now written a memoir about his time in that position that is apparently one more confirmation of Halberstam’s warning. It is said to reveal his experience of a commonness of deceit that has marked the past seven plus years of the executive branch of our government.
Scott Peck wrote the book “People of the Lie” about the nature of human evil and how lies, liars, and lying are the true axes of evil. It is chilling just to recall it. Sisela Bok wrote a book called “Lying.” It is about “moral choice in public and private life.” She covers every conceivable situation in which one lies or must choose whether to lie — deception as therapy for the sick and dying, public good and crises, unmasking liars, lying to enemies, confidentiality, “white” lies, parenting and paternalism, and heaven knows how many others.
In the face of all the neurotics of deceit who can and do pervade church and state in our time, I remember from another source this comment about neuroses: “Neurosis has nothing to do with how one behaves or how one suffers. It has nothing to do with the fact that the psyche, the self, is infused with contradictions. Rather is it primarily the failure of the capacity to attend to the truth about oneself, whatever it may be, with an awareness free of emotionalism, a capacity that the great spiritual masters called sobriety.”
Once again, we’re about to choose another administration for this remarkably- and truthfully-conceived nation that we enjoy.
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