One of the issues that we need to keep our eye on is the lying that Trump does without little or no thought. He just throws a series of lies against a wall and looks for what will stick. But there is the ethical dilemma that enjoys much discussion in an ethics class. If a person believes the lie that he is speaking, is it really a lie? Furthermore, Trump also denies that he said something when it has been recorded, and he is caught red handed. The phrase “caught red handed” has its origin in 15th century Scotland where the best way to catch a murderer is to see the blood on the hands of the accused.
The way to look at the ethical dilemma of a liar believing his lie is to apply considerations to Trump’s words. First, if there is a member of your group of friends who lies repeatedly, it creates a situation of anxiety and therefore control on the part of that friend. A way to control others is to be an agent of unreliability. If a friend says that he will pick you up to take you to school in the morning, and only does that in an erratic manner, you become subject to the whims of that friend. But what if the friend knows that he or she is the only person available to take you? Trump is certainly able to change his position on an issue such as tariffs so he can create unease. Since he had numerous lies in his State of the Union Address which I presume is vetted by his staff, he knows exactly what he is doing.
Trump also has learned that if you are going to lie, lie big for those lies are more often believed as research shows people believe the big lie over the small ones.
People lie if the lie will fit their narrative of what they want the narrative to be. Each of us has an ego ideal developed as part of our growing sense of self identity or who we believe the way that we want others to see us. It was why Zelensky indicated that Trump was caught in a “Russian bubble of disinformation.”
Part of Trump’s ego ideal is that he is a great dealmaker, but a quick look at his long lists of business deal failures reflect that that notion is far from reality.
But he clings to this unreality and doesn’t change after he fails time after time. I think that the best way to know that a person believes his lie is to consider how the lie fits the narrative of what the person ‘s ego ideal wants it to be.
A perfect example is the big lie about who was elected in the previous Presidential election. Trump spent years and 60 cases thrown out in court because he couldn’t or wouldn’t accept that he lost the election. To show the power of that lie we see that he is on a revenge tour now looking for people to blame for his loss. He is even looking to punish law firms and agents who were assigned to his felony convictions.
The following story will demonstrate the power of narrative and wanting only what the ego ideal desires.
A call came in to our school from a writer for Rolling Stone Magazine asking the receptionist to put him in touch with the person who knows M. Knight Shyamalan, the filmmaker, the best for a story he was researching. The receptionist called me and asked if I would speak with the writer. I said, “Sure!”
The writer asked if Knight was a strange kid when he was at EA as the writer was looking for background information for an article where Knight’s early life influenced his genre of horror movies. I indicated that he was a normal kid who had a normal experience at our school. “Was he smart?” My response was “yes” as he was a great student and won the chemistry award at graduation. The writer continued, “I guess his parents put a lot of pressure on him?” My response, “No, his parents were wonderful people who supported him in all of his endeavors.” The writer got angry, and said, “You have ruined my story!” I responded, “Why don’t you write about how normal he is?” His response was, “That would not be interesting! That doesn’t sell.” My responses didn’t fit the narrative that the writer wanted for his story to be. He wanted to write about how weird Knight must have been as a kid which couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Knight is smart and insightful. I asked him to speak in chapel about what it is like to be a young person going through finding their identity. He spoke about what it is like to be an adolescent with the best description I have ever heard and my ethics class that was after chapel agreed with what he said. “The challenge of being a kid is that you are trying to blend in and stand out all at the same time.”
Is a lie a lie if you believe it? It depends on everything that I have written above.
For me, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. Chronic liars are identified when they don’t apologize for the lie that they have perpetuated. It’s a sure sign that they can’t get the reality of life to reflect their ego ideal. They don’t have what psychologists call a “transparent self.”
I have a colleague who is quick to say that he will do something, and often he never gets around to it. But there is no doubt that he intends to do it when he says it. His heart and motivation are in the right place. Is he lying? There have been moments in my life where I have been asked to handle a bad situation. My knee jerk response is, “I’ll take care of it!” There are times, however, when I can’t. Is that lying? Intentionality counts in discerning between a truth and a lie.
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