Who is lying?

Who is lying? Comey or Trump? Or does it matter?

National Geographic recently led with a story about lying – putting forth the complications that currently arise with social media, and glamorizing the most famous of all liars, which included pranksters, con artist, poker sharks and yes even Nixon.

With all of these fabrications, where does the buck stop here? Is here a place that we can identify, or it just as false as the outrageous claims that seem to permeate social media and even now, the office of the President of the United States.

Politifact is keeping track of all the Trump tall tales. They are so numerous that I can’t even keep track anymore. Now we are to believe that Comey is the liar and Trump is the honest one. How can anyone make sense of any of this spin mastering? I don’t know about you, but I am sick of it. I feel an incredible amount of malaise with each marginal word spoken on either side of this issue. I feel this nausea because neither side appears to be attempting to have a legitimate relationship with the truth – offering only some shade of truth, choosing an opposing side that is logically flawed in some way or another. It seems that one must either hate Trump or truly love him. It seems to me that the truth must lie somewhere in the middle…an intermediate which no one in politics, or within all of America, is willing to even explore.

Pro-Trump social media trolls call engagers who challenge Trump whores, sluts, cunts, dick and/or egg heads. Opponents of Trump call his supporters fascists, just to name one characterization, and put forth the common theme “Resist.” What are we supposed to resist exactly? The election of 2016, despite whatever you may want to say about it, did in fact elect this man and put him into office. It seems that a lot of people are pissed off about that; yet, many Americans are jubilant that that happened. To tell you the truth I lost faith in the electoral process several years ago – and admittedly, I suppose that that was a mistake on my part. However, I have felt that I could best serve as an observer without taking a side. I’ve been studying the political lies for some time – since perhaps the “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction” one that has long been forgotten it seems. Lies, Lies and more lies.

Many philosophers see lying as an assault on another – that is, the lie unethically influences the decision-making processes of the lied to. How can one ever make a logical decision if one cannot trust the information made available? The National Geographic article mentioned earlier, despite its apparent celebration of historical lying by the human kind over the years, does contend that we as humans tend to trust more than we mistrust.

So where does this leave us in this malaise of bull shitters? I must admit that I don’t see much hope. I am without hope, and I can only see a future of more social media lies permeating our culture until the lied to can no longer invest in trusting. And, I feel once trust is lost; so goes our humanity.