What About All This Deception and All Those Outright Lies?

The unholy alliance of deception and lies continues to spread with astonishing speed. So many of our posts address one or the other or both. A quick perusal of past posts would provide example upon example of this. But who has time for that?

So to keep today's post on point, let's instead  focus on the difference between the two - deception and lies - and what unites them.

First the simple: Lies. They are intentionally false statements. 

Sadly, lies are pretty common fare to many of us. We start when we're young. If these go uncorrected or ignored, we may have allowed ourselves the "luxury" of lying about many things. For the worst of us, these can be used to injure others, or at least to advance our own interests. For the rest of us, they can frequently be more a "convenience." We forgot to do something small that our spouse requested we do, and we say we did it - then rush to be sure it's done before they "catch" us in the lie.

Frankly, any sort of lying is simply bad - even the little ones. (There's a term "white lies" that trivializes lying. Don't know if folks use that term anymore.)

If we think of ourselves as rational creatures who face the facts, then it behooves us to face the fact that lying has no upside. It diminishes us, even corrupts us to the extent that we're seen as falling within a spectrum from untrustworthy to one be always wary of. Do you really want people to constantly wonder whether you're telling the truth?

We talk about outright falsehoods from time to time in these posts when it comes to the media. Some of these are generated by ignorance or sloppiness in checking the facts. Some, though, are simply lies, whether of convenience or malice.

Personal opinion: During the recent Covid "Mess," there was a whole lexicon of "misinformation" bandied about. But we're recently seeing how some our leaders outright lied to us. Will they face any consequence? Who knows? If the past is any indicator, don't hold your breath.

And those lies conveniently bring us to... 

Deception. To deceive is to deliberately cause someone to believe something that is not true, especially for personal gain. 

While lying is bad enough, deceiving others takes lying to another level, one that can cause great harm to others.

Deception encompasses much of what we have noted as spilling out of the mouths of our leaders, both political and financial. Of course, these two categories don't have an exclusive claim on deception. But they're typically the areas we've focused on in the past.

Here's quick hit list of items that have come across the transom in only the past few weeks.

First, with the recent anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, how can we not shake our heads in dismay at the outright lie that the air was not unhealthy there - both for those working on the pile and for those who worked in the area after the attacks. A senior government official who put this lie out there apologized fro this recently - too little late, no? Shame!

Having worked in the area, it was eminently clear that the air was quite unhealthy. Subsequent illnesses and deaths from breathing that air have reinforced this over and over again.

Did the lie accrue any personal gain for anyone? Don't know. But it did avoid what could have been an honest assessment of the dangers - at the very least. Why not just be honest?

Then there's the now raging battle over Data Centers. Those who either financially benefit, or who believe "we" must "win" the race to dominate the exploding AI technology now rage against those who want to stop the construction near their homes. Their rage can be seen as a kind of deception. There's no mention of: the strain on our electrical grid, or the clear and present physical dangers these centers bring to residents who live in these areas. 

By not addressing these two areas in their rage, they commit the sin of "omission" (as opposed to a sin of "commission"). 

Can we make an argument that our politicians practice the art of deception in the normal course of their duties? We'll leave this up to you to decide. It's frankly too depressing to pursue at this point, given the few examples we've already presented.

Oh, and what about Wall Street? We haven't made the point for a while, but Wall Street is basically a sales organization. With all the "sophisticated" financial blather they spew, their ultimate goal is to sell you something. And while not all sales people use deception in their dealings, we all know many examples of those who do. And with the money at stake on Wall Street, the bigger the prize, the greater the temptation to deceive to get that prize - and the bigger the deception.

While the examples are too plenteous to catalogue here, we'll leave you with this - frankly as a public service. When you see funds - usually ETFs - created that purportedly allow you to access investments that were heretofore reserved to "the rich," you should consider these as possibly (probably?) vehicles for those "rich" who've made extraordinary profits to dump those investments into the hands of the bag holders - us.

Nothing new in that, of course.

Anyway, be aware and be vigilant. 

And, please, do your best not lie or deceive.

With that, lies have been a favorite song subject - for what should be obvious reasons. Here's a simple song from years gone by with the title of...well, guess.