Any simpleton can lie. It used to require a great deal of intelligence to be convincing to much more than half of any population.
There was once a required understanding, at least one would hope in society’s idealistic infancy, of several considerations which might allow lies to be so widely believed: the subtlety and nuance of the lie itself, the audience’s accessibility to the truth, the absurdity or general probability of the statement, forethought to not conflict with one’s previous statements, forged evidence in support of the deception, the ability of the audience to comprehend when they were being lied to, the populaces’ ability to discern facts from opinions or perceptions.
But now, of all the simultaneous and compounding scenarios, the greatest ally a liar has is fear, the shared terrors which inspire the desire and desperation of the masses to abandon reason and proof in exchange for whim and validation, and so that they may believe the false narratives which the darkest part of their ignorance would prefer to believe; what it needs to believe to continue its existence. This is where our ill-informed suspicions beg our minds to wander. All we ever needed was for these sick thoughts to be dignified or even just to be acknowledged as a probability by someone who wields the abstract and meaningless totem of power. Intellect is subservient to emotion. This, alone, can eclipse all other variables.
We are fooled with the ease of accepting our decline as our ascendance, seduced by the oblivious comfort of blind faith for champions we’ve chosen. Cooler heads are the work of fighting impulse, allowing impulse to rule with reckless abandon is far more enticing. We just needed to be given permission.
We are only hearing what we want, but that is also all that is being said.
Joseph D. Newcomer 