How often and culpably do you lie?

To protest “Never” or “Who me?”, past toddlerdom, is a lie. We lie to flatter, move things along, encourage, divert attention from ourselves. We lie about the deliciousness of dishes and beauty of newborns. If your opinion is sought about clothes or prose, either lie or risk amity. I don’t mind faux fans, much as I prefer the genuine article.

When asked how “I am,” I tend to answer “fine,” even to Jane. Bellyaching is both boring and boorish. Spare me interlocutors who detail their particulars!

Whether to lie about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or Death is an open question. In theory, I’m opposed. In practice, I’m likely to succumb to an urge to soothe.

The lies I loathe are malicious. They mean to mislead for the liar’s advantage. They promise the bullets in the gun are blanks when they’re not. The induce us to misdeeds we’d recoil from if we knew the truth. Such liars are scoundrels, evildoers, incorrigible. Lies are like potato chips that way: one is never enough.

I was raised to lie. “Good manners” overruled candor on all occasions. One never uttered a truth that “rocked the boat.” I lied, too, to self-inflate. Five foot eight, not five foot nine, I insisted on the latter.

These days I’m a recovered liar, as allergic to the habit as an AA graduate to booze. Pondering will do that to you. The more you ponder, the more you realize the price of mendacity. It insults its victims and corrodes community. Liars are condemned to solitary confinement, where they are handled, never leveled with. Love is forbidden to malicious liars. How can you love a person that isn’t real?

Lying is the direst of Trump’s crimes against humanity. His self-serving nonsense buffalos his adherents and sometimes the rest of us. His every word is false: he only utters a truth if it serves his turn. His success encourages other politicians to confect without compunction.

Trump was enraged, we read, that anyone should question his assassination account. Maybe only shrapnel grazed him. Maybe he received only a scratch. Of course we’re skeptical. Pinnochios never come clean, they don’t know how.

Lying kneecaps democracy. Democracy is predicated on candid conversation: you say what you seek, I what I seek, let’s make a deal. “You are entitled to your opinion,” said Senator Moynihan memorably. “But you are not entitled to your own facts.” Try conversing with a MAGA enthusiast, and the moment you differ you’re accused of peddling fake news. If we can’t establish direction by conversation, our only recourse is force: do it or else! For dictators, truth is an irksome inconvenience. Trump hankers to be a dictator on “day one” – and every day following.

It’s far easier to break faith than keep it. Truth, in this respect, resembles a vase. Tell me one vile lie and you will always be a liar, my distrust lasting. If a whole political party becomes addicted to deception, how can a leader reunite us?

I lie cordially often, but culpably never, I hope. Until I shrink, I’ll be five eight, never five nine. I’ll mistake facts aplenty but not deliberately.  When I goof, I’ll correct myself, if the mistake’s material. You can trust me to try to tell my truth.

Post-Trump, we must train democracy away from lying – by punishing liars, washing their mouths out with soap, silencing them if they persist. Freedom of speech cannot mean freedom to deceive. Restoring probity, if it’s possible, may take a generation, but without it, democracy’s toast.