There was a time when public servants who knowingly lied were punished administratively, if they had appointed jobs. Elected public servants were punished through elections.
This was a guardrail.
It was an approved and endorsed response to intentional mendacity. Being punished by losing one’s position was a severe penalty for intentionally lying to the public. The severity of this punishment helped to secure respect for truthfulness, which is the foundation of any conversation and the gold of the realm in public discourse.
In 1949, George Orwell released his classic novel, “1984.” At one time, it was mandatory reading for many in high school. Telling the story of totalitarian rule in a very dystopian world, the novel gives us concepts like Big Brother, doublethink and thought crimes. Fundamentally, Orwell’s work is an examination of what happens in society when truth and facts get manipulated for nefarious purposes.
The censorship and propaganda of the Third Reich were his models. Orwell had already warned of dictatorships in his 1945 satire, “Animal Farm.” Hitler and Stalin, Fascism and Communism were Orwell’s targets as World War II ended and the Cold War began. For Orwell, the erosion of truth is what brings people to opt for their own slavery.
Eight decades later, the power of lies is rearing its very ugly head in new ways. Most alarmingly is the fact that lies are being euphemized into misinformation. Correspondingly, the multiplication of the ways in which information gets shared has dulled the impact of a lie when it gets exposed.
\Case in point are the lies that have floated around the internet about FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It is not true that FEMA’s response to the recent hurricanes in the Southeast has been ineffective because its funding has been diverted to care of undocumented immigrants. Both Democrat and Republican officeholders have debunked these stories.
The anger precipitated by this false information, however, has caused hurricane survivors to walk away from help. It has also resulted in threats to the safety of FEMA workers who are working tirelessly to assist victims of these natural disasters.
Mark Twain once said that facts and the truth should never get in the way of a good story. While this bit of humor brings a smile to our faces, it unmasks the true intent of conscious lies. Sadly, there are people in the world who thrive on chaos. The more people who are angered and upset by things they hear which are not true, the more they are confused and bewildered. When confusion and chaos reign, the possibility of real mischief increases. Mussolini promised order in Italy at a time of economic uncertainty.
He allegedly made the trains run on time. Hitler convinced the German people that he would deliver them from their victimhood after the First World War. Both men promised to bring order out of chaos. History is their judge.
Thankfully, we are all able to learn these lessons of history and do not find ourselves on the threshold of “1984” or “Animal Farm.” We are, however, facing the new challenge of sorting through the flow of information, from multiple sources, all claiming to be true. Nuance and spin have given way to outright misrepresentation of facts. Correcting these lies has become a full-time job at some news outlets and the creation of a new form of measurement called a Pinocchio. (The FEMA lies deserve 5 Pinocchios)
Most disturbing of all is not the proliferation of bold face lies in our political discourse but the defense of lies by people who should know better.
Doubling-down used to be a term confined to the Blackjack tables of Las Vegas, it has now become the defense of the indefensible by people who have severed their ties with reality, but who really know better. Helene and Milton were hundred-year storms only they came two weeks apart. To insist that climate change is a hoax in the face of trillions of dollars of damage and the huge loss of life is hard to swallow.
Guardrails in public discourse are more important than ever before. They are the only check in a democracy against the lies that are proliferating around our nation today. People who lie are not sharing misinformation. They are not making mistakes. They are intentionally creating stories for political purposes that are unhinged from the truth. They should never be rewarded. They deserve to be fired. In a democracy, the way we fire liars is by throwing them out of office and keeping them out of office for good.
Msgr. Garrity is a Senior Priest of the Archdiocese of Bostonand former pastor of St. Mary’s Parish and High School, Lynn.
