American Lies

Slouching towards Muscovy

When Americans think about Russia, lies are what come to mind. Right now, the image is of Vladimir Putin lying to the world by claiming Ukraine aggressed against Russia, that his nation was the true victim of the war. For older generations, perhaps it was the Soviet Union lying to its people that the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was minor and under control. Some will think about the lies Soviet citizens made up about one another in false confessions. Others will think of rampant corruption, which is a euphemism referring to special types of lying. Then there was the supreme lie: that socialism had worked and that it was making the Soviets better off than Americans.

Americans do not think of themselves as liars, but after the election of President-elect Donald Trump in November 2024, should that belief remain? Because after the beginning of Trump’s second term in a few days, we are led by a liar. Enough Americans chose to intentionally lie to persuade the majority of Americans to accept lies as facts.

The lies begin in board meetings at broadcast news conglomerates like Fox News, which routinely lie about the events happening in our country. Take for instance the story of illegal Haitian immigrants eating pets, which garnered so much attention prior to the election. A flagrant lie that Fox, Vice-President-elect J.D. Vance, and other legislators repeated despite all contrary evidence. Possibly the next Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth lied for the President-elect and has been elevated to high office. In any other country, most Americans would call that type of lie “corruption”. Colorfully and accurately, the term suggests the degeneration and weakening of our system of governance.

Elsewhere, X (formerly Twitter) led the way for lying on social media to abound, and now Meta under Mark Zuckerburg wriggles to follow suit. Facebook and Instagram will become places where lying may flourish. Disinformation is a stupid euphemism for lying. Americans will be exposed to these fabrications daily, nurturing them into their perceptions and reality until they grow intertwined. If the election of 2024 tells us anything, it is the fact that dishonesty has become a winning political tool in the United States.

During the next four years lying will continue to make inroads into our institutions and legislatures. The United States is becoming a nation with a new dominant political force: lying. One only needs to look to Russia to see how lies as a political tool corrupt the national body. So much so, that eventually a nation may begin to destroy its own people, denying reality as it does so. And as Russia continues cycling through different variations of lying-based governance, Americans must realize that we will only avoid a similar fate by being an honest people.