Trump is Lying, and We Have to Keep Listening

We cannot live in community if lies carry the same weight as truth, if bad words are allowed to destroy good ones.  We cannot get used to the President’s lies.  We cannot accept alternative facts.  We cannot stop insisting on honesty.

Lots of people who have the Ten Commandments hanging on their wall are tempted to ignore the ninth one, but we have to keep paying attention.  Presidents have been dishonest for a long time, but it has always been our job to hold them accountable.  Our work is harder now, because no president of either party has had so little regard for reality.  Presidents need to get in trouble when they lie.

Trump lies about the tremendous size of his electoral victory, the amazing number of people at his inauguration, and the huge number of times he has been on the cover of Time.  He lies about health care, voter fraud, wiretapping, his tax returns, trade deficits, vetting for immigrants, terror attacks in Sweden, and a non-existent apology from The New York Times.  He lies about things that are easily checked—like a non-existent phone call from Mexico’s president calling to praise Trump’s immigration policy.

If Donald Trump had been our first president, he would claim the cherry tree is still standing while holding an ax and eating cherries.  Kellyanne Conway would roll her eyes and back him up.

We cannot say, “That’s Trump being Trump.”  We cannot believe that truth does not matter, because truth is bigger than the presidency.

Conventional wisdom is that the lies are hurting Trump and his policies, but the truth is that lies set everyone’s pants on fire.  Trump may have been elected president not in spite of his lies, but because of them.  His presidency may be the result of our lack of integrity.

We have to understand that justice depends on people telling the truth.  Lies are matches that destroy forests that have been growing for decades.  Lies turn harmony into hatred.  Lies makes us forget how good honesty is.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “There is no God higher than truth.”  Lying hurts everyone by distancing us from the higher truth.  When our leaders love partisan politics more than truth, the whole country loses its way.

We need to be indignant when the President lies.  We cannot let untruths pass unchallenged without damage to our souls.  We need to defend truth, because truth is our best defense.

The words we hear affect our hearts—even when we wish they did not.  We are what we hear.  We need leaders who know how to bless us with what they say.  We need words that heal.  We need words that make us better.

We need to make America honest again.

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One thought on “Trump is Lying, and We Have to Keep Listening

  1. We are living in such a strange time — it’s hard to know what is a cause and what is a response. Many would say they voted for Trump because of Hilary’s decades of dishonesty and corruption, but there is a whole machine behind her at making lies seem like truth. And the “likeability” factor — a likeable liar that “wants us to believe his good intentions” while doing the most corrupt and dishonest things ever is the more typical politician.

    And the media itself is often regarded as “less than honest”. We have had a breakdown in social trust and no one knows what is what — we have not gotten to the route causes of the financial meltdown (no one seriously involved has served prison time) and of all people, we let Barney Frank (a man who ran a homosexual brothel out of his own home while a congressman in Massachusetts) design our financial reform package. And strangely enough — it backfired and benefitted the rich. If one thing backfires we can say “good intentions gone bad”, if 100 things backfire in the same way with the same results, we get a President Trump.

    Trump may lie, this is true. But the thing that has changed is the “tone”. We need to bring back the spirit of civil discourse, mutual respect, and get to the truth. There is so much dishonesty, in our intellectual centers (and the media at large) lies have become the norm (and if you speak truth, you end up getting banished). We need to become a little more comfortable with being uncomfortable, this would be the means to achieving truth under a spirit of grace.

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