Warped Speed: The Speed of Lies
I once knew a dude named Hogan. Pat Hogan. I had to introduce him as “Hogan” because Hogan became more than just a name. It became a concept. The concept was falseness. Sometimes we called him Pat, but generally we referred to him as Hogan, and the life lesson that Hogan issued sprang from what became “The Hogan Constant.”
Hogan and I were Freshman together in 1981 in our dorm at The Ohio State University. We weren’t roommates, but we lived on the same wing of the 4th floor. A dozen or so of the other guys on the floor were all at least a year older, but remained in the dorm, and hence knew one another somewhat. Those repeating as roommates knew one another quite well. Hogan and I, being new guys, got to know one another first. I discovered Hogan, so to speak. In discovering Hogan, I discovered his one spectacular characteristic.
Hogan was a fairly intelligent young man, although you’d never know it. I only assume that he was because he was an aeronautical engineering student, and in Air Force ROTC. While it didn’t take a heavy dose of gray matter to be in ROTC, the engineering programs are a very steep climb. Chances are, Hogan was quite intelligent. That was not his spectacular characteristic though. The thing about Hogan, which I noticed in a very short time was that Hogan lied…a lot. He lied all the time. In fact, if you listened to him, he seemed to never stop lying. I had never seen anything like it, and it drove me to distraction.
Two of my good friends from that time were also good friends of Hogan’s, so we were part of a social group. I saw him often, and not just in passing on our floor. We’d usually have dinner together, we hung out for a bit before studying for the night, and we went out in the same group on some weekends. I had ample opportunity to listen to Hogan. Many years later, a guy in my office was hosting his daughter who had been accepted into the Military Academy at West Point. She came in in her uniform, and he brought her into my office to introduce her. His introduction has stuck with me ever since, and that has been over 20 years now. He said to her, “be careful what you say to Bill because he will listen to every word you say, remember it, and then ask you something in detail later.”
Until then, I had never known that I came across that way, and the idea kind of fascinated me. I didn’t know that people generally did not listen when having social conversations. I do have an idea of how I got there though. My dad, though not a man of many words, was definitely a serious detail person. When I was a child, sometimes when he was actually reeling off a soliloquy about something, he definitely intended for me to hear it, and comprehend every detail. Sometimes he would ask me to repeat back what he had told me because it might appear that I was only half-heartedly paying attention. I learned to repeat back lines of dialogue without actually listening, and he pointed that out to me. Dad started blending in bits of information that made no sense, and when I repeated it back to him, he would ask me what that was. One example that I remember was when he mentioned stopping by the bank to get a stack of $25.00 bills. When I successfully repeated that item back to him, he asked me, “Billy, what is a $25.00 bill?”
So, by the time I got to college, I had the habit of thinking about what I was listening to. When I met Hogan, I thought about things that he said. And when I thought about it, they usually struck me as wrong…sometimes impossible. One of my favorites was when Hogan claimed that cigarette smoking was good for you. Mind you, this was 1981. We were not many years from the ever present public service ads about the dangers associated with smoking.
Hogan’s lying was spectacular. It was like nothing I had ever encountered before. His lies didn’t just oppose the fact. Hogan’s lies stood in defiance of reality itself. It is hard to conceive of such a thing until you actually encounter it. Hogan’s smoking assertion went further. When I said to him, “Pat, how can you think that? That’s not true. We are the same age. We have been exposed to the same warnings from the American Cancer Society. We were required to take “Health” in high school. Your health textbook must have said that smoking was deadly.” He said, “in fact, the idea that smoking is good for you comes from my health textbook.” Again, I thought, that can’t be so. I asked, “how could the American Cancer Society say something diametrically opposed to what was taught to us in my textbook?” To that, Hogan answered, “my textbook was written by the tobacco lobby.”
What drove me nuts about Hogan was that every lie led to another. It was like one long thread of lies, and if you pulled on it, it just kept going. There was never any accounting for something that could not be true. There was only the birth of another lie. I saw this as threatening. One of our mutual friends saw this as fascinating, entertaining, and took it as a challenge. That friend was Laszlo.
Laz, as we called him, was a guitar playing, Electrical Engineering Sophomore with the personality of Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Picture Leonard Nimoy playing electric guitar, and you have Laz as he most often displayed. And while many of these conversations challenging the nature of reality took place in Laz’s room, Laz began to take my view. I could reel back the conversation and say, “each one of these things is false. Am I crazy…or is it Hogan?” Laz’s roommate was Lance. Lance and Laszlo went to the same high school, and were entering their second year as roommates. Lance, was and is something of an intellectual giant himself, although differently natured. Lance was a Finance major, and taught me a different life lesson about types of people. That one involved two divisions of thinkers, Carbon and Silicon. Laz was Silicon. Lance was Carbon. (That’s another story).
Regarding Hogan, Laz took what he observed as a challenge. How could it be that everything that Hogan said was false? We spent months listening and then thinking about it and it remained consistent. Spectacularly consistent. Then Laszlo went to a place intellectually that the rest of us could not follow and created the “Hogan Constant.” Laz created an equation in mathematical terms that stated the affect of Hogan on the universe. The Hogan Constant stated that everything that Hogan said was false, and further that if Hogan did say anything true, it became false by virtue of the fact that Hogan said it.”
This verbal description of Hogan is pristinely accurate. Hogan was a remarkable creature to behold. I fully accept that hearing this description is like hearing about a mythical creature like the Loch Ness monster or a “compassionate conservative”, but Hogan is real and the Hogan Constant is valid. For the next couple of years, we would observe Hogan together, and comb over every word. Sometimes, when we encountered him individually, we might hear something that appeared to be a challenge to the Constant. We’d talk it over and the Constant never failed. The Constant was powerful.
Just as an aside, here is one example of how challenges to the Constant could go. One day at the end of Fall Quarter, Lance and Laszlo was headed out of the dorm to their ride home. We all lived on the 4th floor of the dorm. As Lance and Laszlo were getting into the elevator, Hogan said to them, “well, this is the last time I’ll see you, so I’ll see you when you get back from break.” They said their goodbyes and Lance and Laszlo got into the elevator. Hogan went back to his room to grab his things.
Sometime later, maybe 30 minutes or so, Hogan returned to the elevator with his bags, but when he got there, the door would not open. The elevator was stuck again. It was an old dorm, and this happened fairly frequently, and since it was only 4 floors tall, Hogan just took the stairs. In a few seconds Hogan was in back of the lobby, headed for the front door. As he passed the elevator, the doors opened. The elevator had been stuck since Hogan went to his room. Out walked Lance and Laszlo. The Hogan Constant lived. The Hogan Constant even had the power to hold Lance and Laszlo hostage. The Hogan Constant had power.
I seemed to notice that Pat lied incessantly. Laszlo discovered that Hogan was ruled by the Hogan constant. It was bigger than lies. It was a force of nature…or something.
Thanks to Lance and Laszlo, that was an amusing part of our friendship, even for Hogan…although he said otherwise (of course). Let’s just say, we remained friends. But, I have never been a fan of lying. And now, many years after the years of the Hogan Constant, and Paterson Hall at OSU, I, we, have encountered a man who lies like a force of nature. Say it with me. That man is the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
I’m not going to recount the more than 20,000 lies uttered by Trump. I’m not even going to try to apply the Hogan Constant to Trump. This is much more serious than that. This is more about encountering Trump, and the manner in which he conducts himself, and the way he is received by so many people. The life lesson here is not complete. I think the way the United States conducted itself during Trump’s awful reign of error will be analyzed for years to come, (and of course, that reign may not yet be over). The life lesson in this decade of life is that people, and the perception of truth extend way beyond a bunch of undergrads in a dormitory. People who claim to be patriots have defended Trump on his betrayal of military. People who claim to want a businessman to run the US like a business have embraced a failed businessman and watched as he shocked the economy into a coma by failing to be responsible and competent in other duties. People who claim to value law and order have watched as one close associate after another is indicted and/or convicted of felonies. How Donald Trump manages to garner the support of more than 7 or 8 lunatics nationwide boggles my mind. It haunts me that the deception, self delusion, lying, and fraud are viral. It has always worried me. I never expected to see a President like Trump, even after knowing Hogan. It isn’t funny anymore.
Koshersalaami
08/22/2020 @ 6:00 pm
You can write.
With Trump it’s not just the lying. In fact, it’s not even mainly the lying. It’s the utterly reliable self-centeredness. He’s in the ultimate public service job and he’s the ultimate un-servant. No one matters. Maybe his kids.
As to his followers, the characteristic they share is that they are deeply, deeply afraid that they might owe a minority something. (First I’ve thought of it like this, but I’m probably on to something.) I can’t tell you why it terrifies them that a minority – or a woman – or someone with a lot less money than they have – might be entitled to something, but it does. And I mean anything. Courtesy. Consideration. Equal treatment. As far as that’s concerned, when they give courtesy or consideration they feel that they are owed a favor for doing that. Bootstraps. I owe nothing. The idea that I owe anything is offensive.
The common thread is an utter lack of social responsibility. They hate Hillary because they don’t want it to take a village, even though it does. They want to feel good about saying Fuck You to the rest of the world if they feel like it, and that’s what Trump gives them. What’s sick is how much value that has to them.
They don’t even think they owe thinking about the safety of people they consider to be friends, or at least good acquaintances. I don’t owe you safety. I don’t owe you keeping you safe from police. I don’t owe it to you to wear a mask.
How anyone could ever equate this with Christianity I can’t tell you. You have to divorce Christianity from Jesus completely to get there from here. It would be more accurate to say that they really mean What Wouldn’t Jesus Do?
Bitey
08/22/2020 @ 7:03 pm
I’m honored, KS. I consider you one of my teachers.
Koshersalaami
08/23/2020 @ 12:28 am
I’ve learned plenty from you
Ron Powell
08/22/2020 @ 6:23 pm
“How Donald Trump manages to garner the support of more than 7 or 8 lunatics nationwide boggles my mind.”
The question that will occupy the energy and interest of political historians for decades to come.
One thing that is certain to befuddle the minds of the most astute scholars and pundits; within 5 years of his leaving office, it will become increasingly difficult to find anyone who will openly acknowledge that she/he supported and/or voted for Trump…
Hell, they’re already lying to the political pollsters as we speak…
Art W. Stone
08/22/2020 @ 6:28 pm
I have known liars.
It’s difficult to know if the ones I feel I have known are the only ones, because a really good liar can confuse even those who have insight.
My sister has a passing acquaintance with truth but found it to be less effective than the incessant prevaricating. She has lived a life driving away people sneering at their weakness of not being able to be near her. Closeness forces truth to emerge.
A grade school kid known as “Bud” was another such person. His real name was Harry but he thought a nickname sounded better so he re-named himself. Nothing he said was credible. I heard he lived his last years living off a settlement for slipping on ice. In front of a casino in Las Vegas. That seems preposterous but that was the story. Even stories about him seemed like lies.
I had a boss a decade ago who constantly lied. She claimed to have cancer and sued our employer for discrimination based on something or other. It was lie. The state Bureau of Labor & Industry basically held that a person having cancer would have some record of it which she did not. She contended the decision everyone eventually heard about and could read as a matter of public record was a lie.
There is very little one can understand about these sorts, but the need to do so soon is upon us.
Bitey
08/22/2020 @ 8:49 pm
I don’t mean to be making a moral statement regarding the lies, although the immorality of lying is implicit. I feel as though I am preaching to the choir here. I just find this disorienting. Trump recently opined about the DNC, and called it “dark.” Who in the world would believe that? The answer to that question is a lot of people. It just shouldn’t be. Absolutely no one should believe that the DNC had a dark message, if they saw it.
I remember seeing a bunch of Otto Dix paintings on a CBS Sunday Morning show. Dix fought in WWI and made these bizarre paintings of Germany between the wars. The characters were odd, and grotesque, and acted peculiarly. Are we living in Orwellian times? Are they Kafka-esque? This pandemic has diminished what little I thought I understood about our America. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their Appointed rounds.” Well, we can’t count on that anymore. Maybe someday in the future, but for the next 75 days or so, this is utterly disorienting.
Koshersalaami
08/23/2020 @ 12:19 am
Trump believes anything that opposes him is Dark. As to the DNC, depends who you ask. On they left they think the DNC is dark because it did what it could to fix the primaries in the 2016 election, in part because Hillary was a real Democrat while Bernie was not and in part because Hillary’s campaign bailed them out when they were broke. As a Democrat primary voter I didn’t like my choice being fucked with.
As to what you thought about America, what I don’t think any of us knew about America was how little millions of Americans understand about what makes America America and as a result how little they actually value it. Some jerk comes along with a visceral message about how others are to blame for everything and any value for the Constitution goes straight out the window, in part because they never bothered to learn what the Constitution is about and why it’s a big deal other than the fact that it’s American.
Jonna Connelly
08/22/2020 @ 11:53 pm
Is it a lie if the liar believes what he’s saying?
I heard a psychiatrist recently claim that trmp is technically psychotic because he can’t distinguish reality. Often we think of psychosis as more dramatic than that, taking on alternate personalities or having florid visions. Not so much. Technically, the inability to distinguish what is real and what is not equals psychosis. It’s not seeing little green men in the walls or a knight in flowing red silks on a white horse coming at you full speed. It’s just really believing that mail in voting is fundamentally different from absentee voting or that there are hordes of brown people storming the southern border or Obama mounted a full scale spying campaign on your presidential campaign or that hurricane is going to Mobile.
Koshersalaami
08/23/2020 @ 12:21 am
Trump believes anything that opposes him is Dark. As to the DNC, depends who you ask. On they left they think the DNC is dark because it did what it could to fix the primaries in the 2016 election, in part because Hillary was a real Democrat while Bernie was not and in part because Hillary’s campaign bailed them out when they were broke. As a Democrat primary voter I didn’t like my choice being fucked with.
As to what you thought about America, what I don’t think any of us knew about America was how little millions of Americans understand about what makes America America and as a result how little they actually value it. Some jerk comes along with a visceral message about how others are to blame for everything and any value for the Constitution goes straight out the window, in part because they never bothered to learn what the Constitution is about and why it’s a big deal other than the fact that it’s American.
Koshersalaami
08/23/2020 @ 12:23 am
Sorry, a previous comment reprinted.
I don’t know what Trump believes. I think he has the ability to believe whatever he wants to believe.
Bitey
08/23/2020 @ 8:45 am
Whether or not something is a lie rests mainly on its relationship with facts or reality. The first two definitions of truth state the aspect of being true, or its relationship to reality/fact. Now, as far as we know, inanimate objects do not lie because they are not aware. They do not have will. They do, however, comport with reality. They are of that which is real. They have essence. That reality is immutable. Everything that IS depends on that immutability. The value of truth is reality, and the value of reality is truth.
Now, as for belief. Belief exists in a distant orbit from reality. How distant the belief from reality depends on the believer. Belief may land on reality, but not necessarily so. Reality requires very specific coordinates to accurately navigate. The route between real established facts does not change. Belief can be utterly subjective. Belief is not accountable to facts. This is why someone like Trump uses the concept of “belief”. He is trying to blur the difference between truth and belief…or reality and belief.
Imagine Trump as the only sentient being in the universe. “Belief”, as he seeks to have you understand it would be closest to reality in that case. With one sentient being, and no conversation possible other than actual survival, truth and belief would be parallel. As long as the being survives, those paths do not diverge. However, if his belief does not comport with reality on the subject of survival, then the belief path ends, and the reality path continues to infinity. If Trump “believes” that a cliff is actually solid flat land, and he falls off and dies, his belief fails him. If he believes that a poisonous plant is actually food, the poison will kill him, regardless of what he believes.
So, whether there is just one sentient being, or a civilization of them, the obligation of being within reality is to be faithful to reality. We must do it for our own survival, and we owe it to one another for theirs, and for productive interactions with one an other. Belief, as long as it comports with reality, is useful in that obligation. When it deviates, it is either deeply detrimental to all, or it is deceptive for a specific party’s motivations. A lie. If that deviation/s is consistently in the benefit of the “believer”, to the detriment of that which is real, then it can be reasonably determined to be a lie. Trump’s “beliefs” seem to consistently bend in his favor, and to the detriment of others to whom he has the obligation of accurate representation of that which is real. That is not a pure belief. That is a lie.
Koshersalaami
08/23/2020 @ 10:39 am
I think where lie comes in is “deceptive for a specific party’s motivations.” A claim such as that Trump’s inauguration had bigger crowds than previous inaugurations is a lie. If Trump believes that it is because he wants to believe it, not that evidence drives him to believe it, unless maybe we get deep into pathology. “I am a greater President than Obama, greater Presidents have bigger crowds, therefore I had a bigger crowd.”
I think the edges of what defines a lie are a bit ambiguous when it comes to the distinction between deliberate falsehood and falsehood from lack of reliable data. Somewhere in there may be the issue of whether a good faith effort is made to discern the truth. For example, if someone a thousand years ago told you that the Earth was flat, would that have been a lie? It wouldn’t have been true, clearly. If someone told it to you today, I’d be more inclined to call it a lie because there is so much readily available information contradicting that assessment and to ignore that information involves a level of irresponsibility. “COVID is a hoax” falls under this category. Even if the person saying it believes it, they are clearly not a source to be trusted because they have avoided a good faith effort at discerning truth, like asking their politician about infectious diseases instead of asking their doctor.
There’s also Truth vs. Honesty. Lying is about untruths but not about dishonesty. Honesty involves an attempt to leave an accurate impression. Truthfulness doesn’t have to. For example: one could say:
“Israel is genocidal toward Palestinians.” The problem here is that there are two definitions of genocide: the traditional definition, which is the attempted extermination of a people, and the UN definition, which is way, way broader and includes trying to drive a people out of their homes. By the UN definition, most nations on Earth are guilty of genocide. Using the UN definition, the statement about Israel could be construed as accurate. However, using the UN definition, large parts of the Arab population of France are guilty of genocide toward the Jewish population of France, the result being that thousands of French Jews have emigrated to Israel because they felt unsafe in France. However, no one would ever accuse the Arab population of France of genocide, least of all the people who accuse Israel of genocide. The above statement about Israel may be true but it’s completely dishonest because it implies that this is way more unusual and egregious than it actually is, and that’s the purpose of the statement.
Then there’s your statement about lies being detrimental to survival. Not always. Sometimes lies – and here I mean to oneself – are useful and harmless. As an example, I’ll use a concept that comes from Eastern martial arts, the concept of ki or chi, depending on which language you’re using. For a couple of weeks in college I intensively studied aikido, and the ki in the middle of aikido refers to that ki. I doubt we have physical evidence that ki exists. However, imagining that it exists helps practice. There was an exercise demonstrating ki: two people of about equal size would partner up. One would hold an arm straight out to the side and the other would use both hands to pull the arm down while the first person resisted. In one case the first person would just hold the arm up. It went down quickly. In the other, the first person would imagine a white light emanating from their belly, their core, moving up their body, flowing through an arm and out the fingertips off into infinity in a straight line. The person would relax their arm and focus on the ki flowing out of their fingers into the distance. Even though this person was using a lot less effort to hold their arm up, it was way more difficult for their partner to pull the arm down. This doesn’t prove that ki exists; all it proves is that imagining ki can enable one to hold their arm up more effectively in the face of resistance and using less effort while doing so. What that imagining does in terms of getting the person to tense and relax different sets of muscles to produce the desired result is open to analysis. The point here is that believing what may very well be false produces a desired result at no cost.
I was once asked to teach an adult ed class section on the topic Why Be Jewish? In it, I used the concept of ki as either being real or what I called a useful superstition and equated it with the existence of God. I made the case that even if we don’t know whether God is real, if belief in Him produces a result we desire then believing in Him is rational on those grounds alone.
Bitey
08/23/2020 @ 11:26 am
“Then there’s your statement about lies being detrimental to survival…”
KS, I did not say that lies are detrimental to survival. I said that departure from that which is real can be detrimental to survival. BY that, I mean that survival has specific requirements that do not change. There is some variance within what we can do to nourish ourselves, but we can’t poison ourselves and survive. Reality is the substructure. The lie exists in the perception and translation of the reality provided. Mathematically, 0/1 can be perceived and communicated. It has a useful meaning and exists within that which is real. Conversely, 1/0 has no meaning, can not be perceived, and can not exist. That is the reality component. The truth or lie exists in whether or not one attempts to communicate 1/0 as foundational to some other real thing. 1/0 can only exist as an example of undefined, or impossible. It can not exist as a portion of something offered or received, or needed, or demanded. Claiming to offer it is a lie. Claiming to have received it is a lie…etc.
As for believing in God, three things come to mind. I think of truth, justice, and Pope Francis. Taking the last first, Francis has claimed that atheists may be admitted to heaven, in his view. I take that as a simplistic way of saying that atheism is not so inconsistent with the purpose of the faith that it necessarily removes the atheist from belonging within.
Next, I find those purposes to be so intertwined threads as to be essentially indistinguishable threads. Those threads are truth, justice, and God. I see God as making a sentient, aware aspect to truth and justice. I see all other virtues as contributory elements of truth and justice. Therefore, keeping faith with the truth, in the interest of that which is just, and applying the various virtues in a good faith effort, one may or may not find God. Whether one “believes” that he is on a specific highway to the personification of a divine being, or just making a good faith effort to achieve that which a divine being would have one do is not entirely relevant. My belief is that it is the truth and the justice that is the point.
Jonna Connelly
08/23/2020 @ 1:02 pm
Let me put this in words I can understand: is it a lie if you don’t know you’re lying?
Ron Powell
08/23/2020 @ 1:37 pm
@Bitey;
As with most aspects of the human condition re morality, there are no ‘absolutes’ re lies and lying…
There are bad lies, good lies, and various degrees of lying…
It took the media a long time to conclude that there was ample or sufficient justification to refer to a Trump utterance as a lie or to him as a liar.
Mark Twain — ‘A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.’
Ron Powell
08/23/2020 @ 1:16 pm
@JC;
I created a meme that includes a photoshopped image of Trump as an infant. The quote is as follows:
“It’s not a lie if I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
I haven’t seen or read a challenge to the tongue-in-cheek remark….
However, it hasn’t gone viral…
Bitey
08/23/2020 @ 4:12 pm
“Let me put this in words I can understand: is it a lie if you don’t know you’re lying?“
Is it a lie if it comes from a turnip? No. Is Donald Trump lying? Yes. Is he claiming to be Batman? No. Does he consistently lie in his own interest? Yes.
I get the desire to buy into his mental dysfunction. Frankly, I think his mind has a lot of problems. I also think he is nearly as dumb as a turnip. Almost indistinguishable from a turnip. The thing of it is, he isn’t a turnip. He’s a human. Humans are incredibly complex. I think we all tend to underestimate a human’s complexity when it comes to this sort of thing. I think we underestimate all sorts life. I think the social systems that we create are not remotely as complex as the beings they are meant to serve and regulate. Mostly these social systems succeed based upon assumptions and our social tendencies to follow group behavior. Occasionally individuals come along and completely unzip a social fabric that we had previously believed social constructs like shame and approval would protect like a fortress.
Compare Richard Nixon’s approach to his crimes in office, and what persuaded him to eventually comply. Trump’s approach inoculates him from the sort of shame that Nixon sought to avoid. What I think Trump is doing by consistently lying in his own interest is forcing the controlling social system to act when all there is backing compliance is cooperation. He’s calling a bluff. Practically everything he has done with credit and debt is calling a bluff. I suspect his pursuit and acquisition of mates has been calling bluffs. Trump and all of his main influences tend to have been unzipping social systems and taking benefits parasitically. His father did. Roy Cohn did. Jeffrey Epstein did. Paul Manafort did. Steve Bannon did.
Conversely, everyone who starts working with him, thinking they can be rational where he is not, and then eventually pulls the cord has had a guiding set of principles that reach their limit. This is also how Trump manages to corrupt otherwise relatively decent individuals. He’s the leader, and they must follow. They are safe as long as they are willing to subordinate any principle in pursuit of his goal. Kelly Anne Conway is one example. Mike Pence is another. All of this is not held together by Trump’s inability to discern the difference between a debit and a credit. This is done by not caring about the difference, and making others to go along.
Trump is stupid, but he is not crazy. And in all of his stupidity, Trump knows one thing. He can always find someone willing to move off of principle for something that they want, as long as he never cares about any principle himself. They will follow him to their desires and away from their principles. The thing that makes this hard to accept is that it is really a statement about society more than it is about Trump. It is easier to believe that he doesn’t know the difference than it is to believe that humans generally will cooperate with evil knowingly.
koshersalaami
08/23/2020 @ 6:18 pm
Jonna,
I’ll give you my answer, which may not be Bitey’s.
It can be a lie if you don’t honestly look for truth. Think of any falsehood (meaning anything false, intentionally or not) you’ve ever heard about any minority or about women. Are they honestly believed? Usually. What they aren’t is honestly investigated like any other kind of accusation should be. Anything from women are over emotional to Jews are disloyal to homosexuals are gay by choice because they don’t respect God. People who say those things typically believe them but they’re still lies. Sometimes it has to do with origins as a lot of these accusations started as deliberate lies. I assure you they’re believed, but that belief is typically out of convenience, and accusing populations of things out of convenience is not moral. That’s my shot at an answer.
Ron Powell
08/23/2020 @ 3:27 pm
I suggest the following re the question of a 1st Amendment right to lie:
Sissela Bok’s seminal work: “Lying: Moral Choice in Private and Public Life” (1978). The book remains in print today, more than 40 years after its initial publication, and is widely used in the classroom. Its continuing broad readership pays tribute to the book’s lucidity and good sense. Bok’s work has no peer as a serious treatment of a central, but neglected, dimension of moral life.
Sissela Bok (1934- ) was born in Sweden and is the daughter of Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, two towering mid-twentieth century figures, both Nobel Prize winners. Gunnar Myrdal’s path-breaking study, “An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy” (1944) set the stage for the post-World War II intellectual and political challenge to racial segregation in the American South.
Her father, Gunnar Myrdal won the Economics prize with Friedrich Hayek in 1974. Her mother, Alva Myrdal, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982.