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Sunday 3 November 2024

Lying Down



While we're on the perennial subject of political lying, there is a well-known aspect of life which attracts people willing to lie in pursuit of a rewarding career. These are situations which Wilkie Collins called the liberating opportunity in connection with good and evil. A political career is one of those opportunities.


Are there, infinitely varying with each individual, inbred forces of Good and Evil in all of us, deep down below the reach of mortal encouragement and mortal repression—hidden Good and hidden Evil, both alike at the mercy of the liberating opportunity and the sufficient temptation?

Wilkie Collins - No Name (1862)


Lying can be curiously liberating for people disposed to take advantage of it. We might usefully view it as a core aspect of political status, lying to the plebs, lying from a superior to an inferior position. Lying downwards in a social sense, down the social scale.

3 comments:

dearieme said...

We went out to lunch on Saturday: we ordered a bottle of fizzy water and found that the one delivered advertised the National Independent Lifeboat Association. I'd never heard of it. Is this an outfit motivated partly by the failings of the RNLI? My own feeling is that the RNLI will never get another penny from me while it happily ferries invaders across the Channel.

With what lies does the RNLI defend its politicised actions? How long before the NILA is taken over and spoiled by woke liars?

Sam Vega said...

Telling lies to those you have power over is an interesting phenomenon. Why do they do it?

It might be necessary; they are in a bidding war with others of their ilk. Or they may simply have acquired the habit. But it might also be that they get a perverse pleasure out of being able to outwit others, and need to keep proving to themselves that those they order about are stupid and gullible. But there is also the "1984 scenario", understandably well-arrested in the Soviet Union. They lie to demonstrate that we are of no consequence. We know that there is no grain harvest, the Politburo know there is no grain harvest, but we have to listen to them extolling the size of the grain-mountain, and nobody dare contradict them.

Anyway, diversity is our strength, the government can control the weather, prosperity will come if we tax businesses hard enough, and the country is threatened by far right thugs.

A K Haart said...

dearieme - I've never heard of NILA, although I know the Sidmouth lifeboat is independent without ever wondering why it keeps away from the RNLI. We never give money to large national charities, too many seem more like rackets than charities.

Sam - "But it might also be that they get a perverse pleasure out of being able to outwit others"

I'm sure that must be a good part of it, because they outwit enough voters to be elected. They may get a buzz from that and also from being part of the media circus constantly looking down on the punters.