Guest Post: The Truth About Lies

Via Notes From Disgracedland’s Bjarne Knausgaard

The truth about lies

Would you believe your eyes or my words? (Groucho Marx)

The final objective of the Lacanian psychoanalysis, the end of therapy, is to reach the point of Traversing the fantasy where the patient confronts the traumatic Real and learns how to live with it, but without the fantasy as a cushion. This is the point of re-avowing subjective responsibility. Post-truth politics is a reversal of the Lacanian psychoanalysis — it corresponds to Barricading the fantasy. 2016 American Cultural revolution represents the moment of the grand denial of subjective responsibility.

Truth is highly overrated. Lies are socially useful. We lie to our children — we have to because we love them. We lie to each other, to be polite and to gain social acceptance – if you don’t speak the language of deception, no one will listen to you. We even lie to ourselves, mostly to feel better — life would be unbearable without a healthy dose of self-deception. In fact, we rarely speak truth – 90% of our communication consists of lies. Lies are the dark matter of the social universe. Life without lies would be cruel and lonely. Anyone who doubts this, should try telling their boss what they think of him, or communicate their true intentions to their date or, for that matter, be totally honest with their friends. We accept a lie and structure our social reality based on it. This is how symbolic exchange functions.

Lies are a structured response to reality, a way of dressing the truth. The first three stages of grief (denial, anger, and bargaining) are the best illustration of how we construct various protective layers around a shocking encounter with truth by using self-deception, by effectively lying to ourselves.

While lies clearly have important social function and purpose in private life, it is generally expected that truth remains sacrosanct in public life. Education, media, information sources, and institutional and political representatives — the intermediaries of truth — are expected to adhere to the facts primarily to prevent societies from drifting too far away into self-deception. Their credibility has been measured through their truthfulness. Lies have been always disqualifying.

This is where the biggest change has taken place. For over three decades, the importance of these intermediaries of truth has been systematically undermined. There are several reasons behind this transformation.

There is not enough reality to fill the 24/7 news with content that would satiate profit-hungry corporate sponsors and investors. Reality needs to be manufactured and manufacturing reality and selling it for profit no longer requires accurate reporting, but unlimited commitment to satisfy demand for self-deceptive narratives.

Facts have a low marketing value. They are definitive statements that do not spark controversies or encourage debates – only fools can disagree with facts. Every discussion ends once facts are presented. Facts are boring and have no entertainment value. Unequivocal consensus is static, divided consensus is dynamic and self-sustaining; it is a money-making machine.

Multiparty politics has always really been about the ability to shape public opinion. Political rhetoric is aligned with the interests of various political sponsors. Politicians never change their convictions. Rather than adjusting their views and actions to social realities, politicians struggle to influence public opinion so that it conforms to their policies. Their usefulness and professional worth is measured by their ability to successfully perform this task.

All this has been happening simultaneously as facts and truths have become increasingly more unpleasant and oppressive. Like in everyday life, truth, its bare version, no longer needs to be spoken.

As a result, we had an ongoing process of integration of facts and fantasy, relativization of truth, and manufacturing of consensus. Donald Trump hasn’t come out of nowhere. He is the final product of that process, the endpoint of a continuum that started with Ronald Reagan and has been perpetuated by the likes of Fox News and talk radio, which became an essential ingredient of mainstream politics. Somewhere along the way in this continuum between Reagan and Trump one finds Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell, Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Carl Rowe, Ann Coulter, …

Trump no longer just makes things up, but pretty much lies every time he opens his mouth, even about the things that do not need to be lied about. He seems to have not only mild intolerance for truth, but a deep aversion to it. In his mind, facts and truth represent an inferior and non-marketable product, a low-grade version of what is possible – something that is ultimately undesirable, something people do not want to hear or experience.

Trump is passionate about lying. Politico did an analysis of Trump’s relationship with truth. They found that in five days he lied 87 times. During the total of five hours of continuous talk during those five days, he uttered an average one lie every three minutes and 15 seconds. He lied about the loan his father gave him, about his bankruptcy, about opposing the Iraq War, about financial disclosure forms, about his endorsements, about Obama’s birth certificate, about 1000 Arabs celebrating the tragedy of the 9/11, about paying his taxes, about Hispanic poverty worsening under Obama administration, about Mexicans, about Muslims, about Clinton’s campaign falsely inventing the phrase “alt-right”, about money from his donors, about his university. He even lied about how many floors Trump tower has.

Lies have become a winning ticket. There is a political following that has formed around Trump, an emerging class of entrepreneurs of deception and professional deniers of reality. This is a new breed of post-truth politicians and public speakers. Their goal is to stretch the boundaries of admissible by constantly producing convenient untruths — factually incorrect statements aimed at wearing down public resistance to lies and nonsense. This is the key takeaway of the 2016 Presidential elections.