Untruths

Professor David Gelernter has an article in the L.A. Times commenting on insincerity in politics. My two comments are 1) insincerity is too kind a word and 2) it is not limited to politics.

"Insincere" implies a sort of self-awareness that is lacking in the discourse Gelernter mentions as examples. Maybe self-awareness is wrong, but I am insincere when I apologize for something I really did not think was wrong. Lying for the purpose of personal destruction is something quite different.

In my position (I am an executive in a corporation), I am occasionally sued. The first time I read a complaint directed against me, my jaw dropped. The claims made were demonstrable lies. I called my attorney and was politely informed that there was no "perjury" in a complaint and their purpose was to get into court, not win the case. They lie, they get settlement money, end of story.

In one deposition, caught in one of these lies, the plaintiff assured everyone that the statement wasn't a lie, but an "untruth." An untruth, you see, is not a lie. I guess it is a strategy.

Truth is one of the basic fabrics of our civil life, not a weakness. The state of discourse, whether in politics or in life, does seem to have slid into "insincerity." That is unfortunate, as individuals, we have every few things that we can truly call our own, but one of them is our honesty. One should think hard before one throws it away.