June Bower
The subject of ethics has been in the news quite a bit lately. There are calls for the Supreme Court Justices to establish a formal code of ethics in light of the controversy surrounding them, and the Representative from New York, George Santos, has been called before the House Ethics Committee for his astonishing record of fabrications that became public after his election last November.
In our world of extreme politics and all-consuming social media, we Americans are inundated with examples of dishonesty. Granted, there can be logical variations to truthfulness. All of our perceptions are colored by our own experiences, and we can easily distort the facts, sometimes without really meaning to. Still, some are far better at sticking to the truth than others.
We all know the person who is not better at it, who lies habitually; the one about whom everyone says, “You can’t really believe anything he says.” For different reasons we may ignore their inventions and exaggerations, sometimes to our profound regret. It’s a problem when social media entertains lies and spreads misinformation without consequence. There’s so many falsehoods floating around out there, it’s no wonder people believe crazy stuff. Worse yet, they repeat it, not caring if what they’re passing onto others is based on facts or not.
Christian and Jewish religions consider lying a sin. It is one of the Ten Commandments - those faith canons so many have such a hard time following. The Ninth Commandment reads, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” According to the teachings of Christ and nearly all other religions, lying and dishonesty pervert and corrupt hearts. It used to be no one could slander others or pervert the truth without penalty. Nowadays, people say almost anything about another person and no one even bothers to challenge them.
As prevalent as dishonesty and deception are on Twitter, I am still shocked when posts appear that are totally beyond reason. Recently, someone posted the following, “The President of Ukraine owns a $35 million dollar home in Florida and has $1.2 billion in an overseas bank account. Zelensky owns 15 homes, three private planes, and has a monthly income of $11 million dollars. Why is no one questioning where our Aid is going?” No source was cited for this claim that is so over the top, only someone with an I.Q. of 60 would believe it.
This is what we’re up against in trying to determine the truth about anything. It would be easier to get off social media altogether and avoid the aggravation of encountering nonsense like this. Unfortunately, that would leave Twitter mostly to the loons. Embellishing the truth has never been completely uncharacteristic of politicians. They’re pretty good at painting positive pictures of themselves and their parties, and negative pictures of their opponents and corresponding parties. Most of us accept it as just politics.
Lying was brought to a whole new level, however, by the former president and his administration, and the American people are still suffering the consequences. It opened up a new and alarming approach to political dialogue. Now, politicians regularly accuse one another of corruption and illegal conduct in ways that could never have been said previously without evidence. Nowadays, an opponent’s accusations can’t even be refuted before everyone moves on to the next attack. The lies quickly extend far beyond the original claims.
Sympathetic TV hosts broadcast stories without bothering to verify them; social media extremists exaggerate them; and the gullible followers on Twitter and other platforms jump on new unfounded rumors, ready to repeat them again and again. Of course, the biggest lie to date is the claim the 2020 election was stolen. No matter how many times this falsehood is disproven, it remains a “truth” in the minds of millions of people. Yet, every day, more evidence comes to light that 2020 was a free and fair election.
Just recently we learned the Trump Campaign had commissioned the prestigious Berkeley Research Group to prove there was fraud in the 2020 election. Their team carefully looked at voter turnout, birth date of voters, so-called dead voters and other anomalies. Berkeley Research Group found no evidence of fraud. Their findings never saw the light of day, however, because the Trump Campaign never released the report.