Be sure sure it’s true when you say I LOVE YOU/It’s a sin to tell a lie/Millions of hearts have been broken/Just because these words were spoken … it’s a sin to tell a lie. Sung by The Ink Spots and others.
Yes, my word this week is the simple word “lies”. Daily, we need to filter through incoming stimuli to separate the credible from the incredible. Much of what happens to us is often the result of someone dropping a whopper and telling a lie. Some are lies of commission, where we deliberately distort the truth or we withhold the truth which could help towards solutions to problems. These are lies of omission.
Lying is the national job of our politicians, lawyers, negotiators, opinion-givers, policy-makers and other such luminaries who doctor what they say in order to serve dubious purposes. Of course, some lies are not malicious, like withholding the stark truth from a cancer patient, or tempering performance ratios to promote more effort or altering statistics to lubricate negotiation.
But lies that constitute spin-doctoring, or distortion of truths to protect criminals; lies told to young men to convince them that dulce et decorum est propatria mori – it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country – should be revisited. The war poet, Wilfred Owen, called this a lie, using the line as titular in his seminal poem. He claimed it only applied to one-on-one combat where a principle is defended, or an honour has been sullied. Flying machines and long-distance ballistic missiles are not noble, neither for country nor for mankind.
The Americans have never won a war where they sent young men to fight in countries whose language they couldn’t speak. The most disgusting line in a film says coldly and callously: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” If we know what napalm is and what it does, its small wonder that this insensitive falsehood caused many American 19-year-olds to return home in body bags.
The ultimate exemplar of veracity or telling the truth has to be George Washington, the first American president. We know his confession to his father that he had chopped down the cherry tree. I am not saying he just chopped it or chopped it down. What I want to say is that he was telling a truth, whatever it was, to his dad. That story is dubious, and is said to be an addition to Washington’s life-history by his first biographer, Mason Weems. It is claimed that Weems added the anecdote merely to promote the art of telling the truth among the children at the time. In any event, the story appeared in the fifth edition.
My problem is, who gives a child a chopper for a birthday present?
My dad really beat the tendency to lie out of me when I was seven years old. I had used his Minora blade (remember them?) to sharpen a pencil, then surreptitiously returned the blade to the dispenser. He didn’t ask or accuse me. He merely showed me the damning pencil-lead marks left on the underside of the blade. I think I have lived a lie-free life since.
There is my tale for the week. ANC, stop lying. It gets you nowhere. Children, don’t lie to your parents. They know when you are lying. Lovers, do not lie to your paramours, just as a sign of respect. Murder will out. If you tell one lie, you have to spend the rest of your life defending it. It’s not worth it. Speak the truth and shame the devil. And the truth will set you free.
* Alex Tabisher.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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