It starts with feeling a little sick, like the flu or pneumonia. You’re dizzy, but then you notice others feeling it too. The room is shaking or, if you are outside, you feel the ground move. Solid earth is no longer solid or stable. It’s an earthquake, and it can effectively undermine your faith in reality.
In a psychological sense, serial lying has a similar effect. And as Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School says, we’re living in “an era in which lies have become ubiquitous” — an “age of deception.”
There have always been pathological liars, including some in public life. But today, Americans seem to expect lies from more than thieves and obvious charlatans.
Many of us have come to expect lies from politicians, enemy countries, and partisan friends and neighbors. At best, all these lies make us cynical; at worst, they cause psychological problems of our own.
It needs a biblical solution: shunning. Some of us — especially young people — are doing just that.
The problem isn’t the mundane lies, such as quietly knocking off work early to grab a drink with friends. Nor is it the “lies” that we understand and like. Marlon Brando once said that his profession, acting, was “lying for a living.” Some jokes or stories told with a few liberties might technically be lies but are harmless fun. Sometimes we might lie out of compassion, telling someone they’re not going to die or, less tragically, that those pants don’t make them look fat. Those are truly situational and usually OK.
Then there are harmful personal lies, like finding out a longtime companion has been lying for years about something that matters deeply to you. Finally, there are lies in the public and government spheres.
Enemy countries have long used disinformation as a form of warfare. Former CIA officer Philip Wasielewski says these lies are “as essential as any strategic or conventional military capability and are used more often” — a type of irregular warfare that’s a “struggle for legitimacy and influence over the population.”
What happens when technology takes lying to a new and pervasive level?
Artificial intelligence can now replicate people’s faces and voices to spread ideas you may think come from a trusted person or institution. China, Russia and Iran use it to implant disinformation into other countries. Of course, given how much lying and disinformation is already in our lives, it’s not clear how well this actually works.
There are many laws against lying, but they don’t address all of it. You can’t lie in court (perjury) or to Congress. In fact, it’s a federal crime to lie on any matter to the executive, legislative or judicial branch of the United States. To be a crime, you must know that you are lying, and the lie must matter, i.e., it must be material.
Unfortunately, when politicians lie to us, it doesn’t seem to be against the law. Talk about asymmetrical. Their lies, at least ordinarily, are well-protected by the First Amendment. What’s worse, they do it for a purpose, and far too many of their supporters and partisan allies agree that the end justifies the means.
Can we pause and agree that the damage over time far outweighs any short-term justification?
Not everyone is suited to be a lying politician. In the classic 1908 book “Anne of Green Gables,” Lucy Montgomery wrote of a would-be politician from an honest family who would “never succeed at that” because “it’s only rascals that get on in politics nowadays.” How many Americans feel the same way today?
Both millennials and Gen Z’ers know that their cohorts lie a lot and many are losing trust in media and government. Some tune out completely, and some just look at their own and their friends’ personal experiences for truth. They know that far too much of what they see, read and hear is just lies.
It’s only likely to get worse before it gets better. Maybe there’s an old solution that will help: markets. In a market, no one can make you buy what you don’t want. You don’t have to subscribe to, buy from, listen to or vote for anyone you think is lying to you, even if you like the product or are on the same side as the candidate.
Shun every true liar, and maybe you can find a way back to solid feeling under your feet.
Richard Williams is a senior affiliated scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and former director for social sciences at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
