Lies and Damn Lies

Both kinds of lying are indecent, but there’s a difference between them. Lying to the Pope brings deceit to the godly realm while lying to the public brings it to the realm of democratic governance. In religion, lying is a sin; in civic life it’s a betrayal of trust, a breach of contract.

When Trump depicted himself as Jesus and criticized Pope Leo as weak on crime, he added that he had won his 2024 election by a “LANDSLIDE.” Further, he claimed that Leo wouldn’t have been elected pope had Trump not been elected president. The first claim about winning by a landslide is simply a lie. The second claim, that the pope owes his papacy to Trump, is harder to classify. Let’s call it a narcissistic fantasy or, befitting a Greek tragedy, hubris.

Webster defines a landslide as “a great majority of votes for one side” and “an overwhelming victory.” Trump did win, but he did not win a majority, let alone an overwhelming majority. He won by what is called a plurality. That means he got the most votes. His plurality was 49.81% of the total votes to his opponent’s 48.34%. These are facts. They can be verified.

Here are three presidential landslides: Reagan over Mondale (59% of the vote), Nixon over McGovern (61%), and Johnson over Goldwater (61%). And they won 49, 49, and 44 states respectively. The big margins matter because a landslide allows more confidence, more leeway, even the coveted “mandate.” That’s probably why Trump lied about it.

Religious life and civic life rest on distinct foundations. Religion rests on spiritual authority. Proverbs 6, for example, says God “hates” seven things: A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run to evil, a false witness, and one who sows discord among people. Together the seven “are an abomination to Him,” and two of the seven involve lying.

Civic life rests on a social contract and, inescapably, the authority of facts. Facts are empirically verifiable statements, and they matter to our commonwealth in ways we may not have grasped until Trump’s gusher of lies made it apparent. The sci-fi novelist Neal Stephenson put it well: “The ability to talk in good faith about a shared reality is a foundational element of civics that we didn’t know we had until we suddenly and surprisingly lost it.”

Civic lying is lying in public to the public. Trump didn’t invent it (its history is long and seedy) but he took it over the top. The problem with civic lying, philosopher Hannah Arendt stressed, is not only that the lies are believed as truth by disciples but also by the unwitting. And then, worse, it fuels a particular kind of cynicism: “an absolute refusal to believe in the truth of anything, no matter how well this truth may be established.”

It is this cynicism that compounds today’s civic crisis—the belief that nothing can be believed, that the boundary between truth and falsehood has dissolved, and that knowledge depends on who said it, not facts.

Animals have an internal compass by which we take our bearings in the world. It helps us keep our balance spatially but also factually so that we can sleuth our way through truth and falsehood. (Is that a rope or a snake?) Whether we are kings or paupers, lions or lizards, we don’t like to be fooled.

Trump’s compass is consumed by his ego. This is true of all of us to some degree, but Trump sets a new standard. He was elected by a LANDSLIDE, otherwise Leo wouldn’t be Pope. Really? May our country survive him.