Jussie Smolletts, Us, and The Lying Piper of Queens

Would the fiery pants fit if you said, “Liar, Liar, pants on fire!” to your neighbor? To someone you don’t particularly like? To a politician? Perhaps the fiery pants would fit if you said this burning rhyme to the mirror? Are we becoming—or worse: have we become--a nation of liars? Stragglers, loners, losers—are those who refuse to lie naive, nitwitty, nuts?

I think a good case can be made for the proposition that there has been a marked increase in lying over the past fifty years or so. Wearing metaphorical fiery pants while wearing cool clothes has, I think, become the style. (Take what I write with a pinch of salt, please—I am old, and old people tend to idealize the past. I don’t. think I do, however. I acknowledge that life before the civil rights movement was not much of a life for millions of my fellow citizens. I also acknowledge that Joseph Goebbels was (again metaphorically) alive and well in the America of my birth. Still…)

There is evidence for this trend. Lying is certainly associated with narcissism—for the narcissist, truth is more or less what is subjectively to the narcissist's advantage—and this malady has been demonstrated to be on the increase. Jean Twenge, a psychologist and coauthor of The Narcissism Epidemic reports that millennials are scoring significantly higher on The Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which measures the sad, ongoing journey to selfie from self.

I am therefore confident that writing about the increase of the narcissist's pick-me-up, namely lying,  is not sour grapes from a bitter old man; I’m writing about sour grapes that are being consumed by the present generation as if they were candy. Sugar coated selfy grapes might seem sweet at first, but they are certainly not part of a heart-healthy diet!

I will provide two egregious examples of narcissistic lying. The first is the case of Jussie Smollett. The second is the pants-on-fire guy in the White House.

It seems to be quite likely that Mr. Smollett staged a hate crime in which he played the victim. He likely did this to gain sympathy, specifically. to get a raise—(He was working as an actor on a cable show, and was already extremely well-paid.)

Let us assume he is guilty, which is very likely. How did he react when the mounting evidence indicated that he was lying. He double-downed on his lies. He asserted that he was telling the truth “from day one.” As a “man of faith” he claims that he could not be lying. He wouldn’t be “his mother’s son” if he were not telling the truth.

How can someone lie so shamelessly?

When I was an elementary school student in the 1950s, I remember what was then a familiar story, albeit an apocryphal one: George Washington and the Cherry Tree. The young Washington received a gift of a hatchet from his father when the former was six years old. George used it to take  a few swings at one of his father’s cherry trees. "Who did this," asked his angry father. The future president famously responded “I cannot tell a lie—I did it!" His father embraced him, informing him that telling the truth was worth a thousand cherry trees.

Yes, this anecdote never happened, but that’s not the point. The lesson to be learned was that telling the truth is essential. “Truth is relative, and, by the way, You’re special!” was not part of the 1950s elementary school curriculum.

My wife who emigrated from India in 1972, learned similar lessons at school. She remembers a little anecdote about a guru. A woman wanted her son to stop eating sweets; he wouldn’t listen to her, and continued to eat sweets on the sly. So she brought him to a guru. “Swami, please tell my son to stop eating sweets—it is ruining his health." The swami was silent. The mother couldn’t believe the silence ringing in her ears. At last the guru told her to return with her son in a week. When they returned, the guru lost no time in telling the son not to eat sweets. "Thank you, Swami” the mother replied. “But why were you silent last week?” “I had to give up sweets first. A man of truth must practice what he preaches."

It’s a kid’s story, true, but it contains a lesson kids must learn if they are to become non-narcissistic adults: develop a moral compass that always points to integrity. Tell the truth, even if it puts you at a disadvantage. It’s not all about you!

2.

A German professor once said to our class, “Viele im Kleinen haben gedacht was Hitler im Grossen gedacht hatte.” (Many (in Germany) thought in lower-case what Hitler in upper-case thought.”  I never forgot that sentence. Big Liars can infect us and lead us over the precipice. It happened before.

Perhaps Smollett can be viewed as one of those little liars, a chemical drip precipitated into reality by the pernicious solution concocted by the Big Liar at the top. 

Can you imagine what boy-Trump would have replied to his father? “Daddy, what’s cherry tree? What’s a hatchet?” Pressed further,  he would surely have blamed it on a bad black boy named Obama.

Our current president has reportedly told over two thousand lies since he’s been in office--a dismal precedent. How many people have descended into rodents blissfully following the Pied Piper of Queens? Many, I’m afraid.

Trump is without a doubt a malignant narcissist. Good for him is what serves him; Evil for him is what opposes him—that is, Morality. How long can this go on? Can we afford to wait until it’s raining smolletts? Where will Truth take shelter then?

 Our house is on fire! Where can Truth take shelter now?

Among senators; among members of Congress; among smolletts; beside our President? We are Truth’s ambassadors! We cannot tell a lie! Yeah, right.