It’s not that I look down on liars. I do, but that’s not the reason I don’t lie much.
And it’s not that I don’t find myself, on occasion, in need of a really good, really inventive lie. For example, when I’m at a restaurant with a new friend and the food is really expensive but just OK tasting and the server interrupts my attempt scintillating conversation with “How’s the food?”, I wish I could say something truthful, like ”It’s not great, but I’m really trying hard here, so could you please just buzz off?!”
But I don’t. “Great!” I say, hoping he won’t ask anything else and run my train of thought further off the track. It’s a lie. And not very clever, but it allows me to get back at the task at hand quickly.
There are all kinds of lies; for example: Loyalty Lies.
If a friend asks how I like her new dress I always, always like it. Ditto hairdos, shoes, and all her friends.
My friends’ kids are also cute as buttons and very smart.
Or Silly Lies.
Years ago, and I mean many, many years, a single friend and I were at a bar, sitting a few stools away from a very pretty woman. He told me to pretend to argue with him – and loudly. So I did. We yelled back and forth for a minute or so and then he held his hands up. He walked over to the woman and said, “Could you settle an argument? My friend thinks you’re 40. I don’t think you’re a day over 30. Which of us is right?”
Of course, not everyone appreciates Silly Lies. The woman paid her bill and left.
I think one reason so many young people like Bernie Sanders is he doesn’t seem to lie that much. If he did, I doubt he’d even use the word “socialist”, as in “Democratic Socialist”. The “S-#@!“ word has been taboo since the 1930’s, when it was first confused with “communism”. In the 1950’s, McCarthy used it to great advantage until he got caught lying. Trump is already polishing it for use next year on any and every Democrat.
The media and Democrats say Trump has lied over 10,000 times since taking office. His fans call that a Statistical Lie – or would, except they really don’t care; he’s their liar, after all.
Also, at this point we all know he lies. So, no big deal, right?
When other politicians lie, though, it is a big deal. When Elizabeth Warren kept saying she’d raise “taxes” on the wealthy to pay for Medicare For All, but “costs” wouldn’t go up for the middle class, I was really impressed. Until I realized “costs” sounded like another word for “taxes”, but it could have meant that overall “costs”, including “medical” would shrink, but “taxes” would still grow. She just didn’t want to tell the middle class their taxes could still go up.
That’s called a Clever Lie. Most politicians excel at those.
Trump is one of the best liars ever – no matter what the reason. For example, I’m sure he never had to lean on his dog for a missing homework. Nope, I’ll bet his excuse was, “I’m sorry to say teacher, your dog ate my homework.”
The thing that makes him such a great liar is he never backs down from a lie. He lies about the lies.
It’s a very good tactic, but you have to be good at it.
His “acting” Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, tried to pull a Trump in trying to “walk back” (lie) about his lie to Fox’s Chris Wallace last Sunday about Trumps’ “quid pro quo” phone call with Ukraine. (See YouTube “Mick Mulvaney One-On-One with Chris Wallace 10 20 19”).
He got most of Trump’s moves right. He was measured, confident. And best of all, he kept a straight face. (“Who, me lie? Oh Gosh, No!”)
But he failed at the lie about the lie. All he offered was, “I didn’t say what I did say”. Definitely not up to Trump standards. Trump would have said something way more bombastic.
It was like the Eagles Cody Kessler trying to become Carson Wentz.
That’s why I don’t lie much, except for Loyalty Lies. It’s too hard to make up a really good, believable lie, too hard to deny it when caught, and too hard to remember, down the road, what the heck I had lied about anyway.