24A035 Liars, the Lot of Them by Jim Davies, 9/10/2024

I've a simple mind. If someone says A, I believe him or her, unless there's very strong evidence that the truth is B. Because I seldom speak with government people, that works out quite well.

There are lies, I admit, which are not morally wrong. You live in Utrecht in 1943 and you answer a Gestapo agent at your door who asks "Are there any Jews living here?" with "No!" - when the truth is "Yes." Brave, dangerous lying. But in no way, immoral.

Or you are mugged, on a dark night in a quiet city spot; the muggers take your money with knives wielded, and Charles Bronson is nowhere to be seen, and they ask "Do you have any more cash?" and you answer "No!' whereas in your back pocket there is in fact a spare, emergency wad of $500. Another risky lie, but in no way immoral. Nobody is obliged to tell the truth to a robber.

Or there is an IRS agent, snooping for unreported "income", though she refuses to tell you what, as defined in the Law, "income" is. You say there is none. She is just another thief (though with a much larger and more powerful set of associated thugs than the regular kind) so you lie. Risky, again, but nothing immoral about it.

Otherwise, lying is reprehensible. It betrays personal trust, makes agreements doubtful, hinders trades large and small. It violates the moral standards both of religions and of the rational ethical standard that springs from the self-ownership axiom, and which is squarely based on self-interest. Becoming known as an habitual liar is really bad for self-esteem and for earning a living.

Such concerns about good morals carry no weight, though, with government. The standard there is to acquire power, then to keep it and extend it; preserving support of those it dominates is important for that purpose, so not infrequently rulers may describe their nefarious actions as "good" in some way; as in "we sent $X billion to help..." but fail to mention that the $X billion was first stolen from those who earned it.

So government people lie all the time, in almost all they say. "How can you tell when a politician is lying? - when you see his lips move." That's not just cute, it's realistic. They tell the truth sometimes, but only by coincidence.

In 2020 I wrote the ZGBlog Twelve Huge Government Lies, which listed some whoppers; here is a couple more.

As indicated by the twelfth on that list, the "Covid 19 régime was a major killer, a pandemic." We now know that it was no such thing; it was a major swindle, a complete fraud; any doubts on that score should be settled by reading the ZGBlogs listed and linked at the foot of this one.

The latest Big Lie is that "Russia began the Ukraine War." It did no such thing. Putin did formalize it, but in two ways it had begun long before February 2022; the "first shot" and thousands of others following it had been fired at pro-Russian dissidents in Donetsk and Luhansk by Ukrainian forces ever since 2014, and the hostility to Russia itself had been manifest since the mid-1990s when, contrary to FedGov promises when Germany reunited, membership in the anti-Russian military alliance NATO was doubled. So it's better called "The War of Russian Independence."

Last month, the Biden Gang allowed Ukraine to fire long-range missiles into the heart of Russia, to which the RusGov has responded by revising its "nuclear doctrine". The danger of a nuclear holocaust is growing monthly, and it's all based on that Big Lie that the conflict was begun by Russia. It was not.

Governments more or less have to lie, because their whole existence and being is a total falsehood from top to bottom. They say they are necessary, but they are not needed at all. They say they have rightful authority, but they have none. They say they exist, but they don't even do that; its members exist and wield their guns and courts and prisons and live well on money they steal from those who earn it in voluntary exchange, but as an actual entity like a company, with assets, liabilities and contractual obligations, no: they do not exist at all. They LIE.

Slowly - far too slowly - public trust in them is, accordingly, falling. Our job is to accelerate that process before the nukes begin to fly.