Conspiring together in the art of lying

Fair warning: many people, especially most Americans, will consider this piece as exaggerated, distorted, or just plain false. Over the top perhaps, or way out there; pick your cliché.

This column deliberately violates a taboo, a line few politicians or pundits ever cross, the Nazi resonances in the dynamics of American politics under Donald Trump and his cult of personality, also known as the Republican Party circa 2020.

The thought came to me observing the latest torrent of Trumpian lies. Trump has been complaining incessantly about how unfair his impeachment is. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he keeps saying.

Donald Trump, have you ever done anything brave, right, kind, honest, faithful, fair, or unselfish in your whole lamentable life?

No. Let’s start with brave. As Trump’s former Secretary of Defense General Jim Mattis said after being savaged by Trump, who called him the most overrated general in the world, Mattis, a much-decorated combat veteran said: “I earned my spurs on the battlefield … Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor,” referencing a medical deferment for bone spurs that kept Trump from serving in the military during the Vietnam War.

Mattis by knockout.

Trump is not big on right action either. In the American legal tradition right action refers to the fulfillment of legal obligations, such as contracts with business partners, spouses and others. Trump has systematically stiffed private contractors working on his building projects, bankers that have extended him credit, workers in his various enterprises, fellow American taxpayers through tax avoidance and evasion, and naïve, hard-up students who paid good money for a lousy education at his fake university.

In a deeper sense, for instance in relation to what Buddhists consider right action, Trump could not be farther from the mark. In that philosophical tradition, right action can be summarized in three principles:

1 – Abstaining from Killing: Not threatening the welfare of other sentient beings.

By killing a top Iranian general based on a bogus pretext of imminent attack, Trump has just shown how far he is from abiding by right action. Moreover, by being the only world leader that denies climate change and opening the floodgates to polluters of every stripe, Trump is a threat to every sentient being on the planet.

2 – Abstaining from Stealing: Not taking what isn’t given (freely). [There are many kinds of stealing: Taking something be deception, by using false claims, or false arguments. In some cases, stealing involves false speech, such as deceptive speech or lying. In taking something violently, violence or the threat of violence is used to take something. The threat may be overt or suggested. For instance, a mugger takes property by violence. A frightening person might force another to agree to something (stealing their free choice). Similarly, a regime might force people to obey the regime and support its proposals.]

3 – Abstaining from Wrong Sexual Intercourse: A Buddhist should not have sex with someone who is not consenting or who cannot give their free consent. Having with another who does not give their consent, is sexual rape. Even if a person gives their consent to sexual intercourse, a Buddhist should not have sex with them if they cannot give free consent. Someone who is married, engaged, going out with another; someone of lower rank or status, as an employee or junior, a patient or a student. A Buddhist, therefore, should not have sex with anyone who does not give their consent, or who cannot give their consent (for moral, physical or mental reasons).

Full disclosure: I am not a Buddhist and have not always met every one of these strictures, especially on the third point. I am human and Cuban. But, mother, the only person who ever commanded me, told me to never strike or coerce a woman. Even if I didn’t know that is wrong, I would have never done it. Did Trump have a mother? You never hear about her, only the father. A motherless child is a menace.

Kindness? I think we can dispense with that. Trump does not have a kind bone in his body. Putting children in kennels to deter families fleeing for their lives from seeking asylum? Building a wall intended to cause grievous bodily harm to anyone attempting to cross the border? Denying health insurance to millions by trashing Obamacare? Kindness? Give me a break.

Honesty, faithfulness, fairness, unselfishness? Stop with the humor already.

Unlike Donald Trump, I believe in the rule of law, not vigilante justice. Trump, who loves to idolize earlier and more brutal periods is lucky that those are the rules we play by in these more enlightened times. If he lived during the American Revolution and had betrayed his country to two foreign powers, he would have been tarred and feathered or hanged. I remember the spot in rural North Carolina that contained a marker commemorating where a tax collector for the Crown was hanged.

Why does Trump keep repeating the lie about his innocence and so many other lies that are easily debunked? Simple. Repeat a lie often enough and at least some people will believe it. The bigger the lie the more likely it will be believed. Joseph Goebbels, the talented and truculent Nazi propagandist, was not the first to discover that, but he put it into practice as well as anyone ever has.

As a propagandist, Trump is not in the same class. But, like Goebbels, he has an uncanny ability to tap into the darkest recesses of the human psyches and exploit the most bitter grievances for political advantage. Trump had an excellent teacher introduce him to those malevolent arts, Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s political hit man.

But Goebbels got his big lie theory and venom from the best, from the Minotaur’s own mouth.

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote:

“…[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

“It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”