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Buy The Intercessor<\/em> paperback or ebook from Amazon<\/a>, Barnes & Noble<\/a>, Bookshop.org<\/a>, or Ingram<\/a>! <\/strong> <\/p>\n David Denby has a very interesting piece in The New Yorker<\/em><\/a><\/strong> on the historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt, drawing on several biographies and her own work. The whole thing is worth reading, but it\u2019s the final quotation that has been burning a hole in my brain since I read it. Interviewed on French television in 1973, two years before her death\u2014more than 50 years ago\u2014she said this:<\/p>\n If everyone always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that no one believes anything at all anymore\u2014and rightly so, because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, to be \u201cre-lied,\u201d so to speak. So a lying government which pursues different goals at different times has constantly to rewrite its own history. That means that the people are deprived not only of their capacity to act, but also of their capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n While Arendt spoke this deep truth, the catastrophe that now presides over the White House was having his vicious and vindictive friend and advisor Roy Cohen countersue the U.S. government for $100 million<\/strong> to force cancellation of the charges that his family had systematically discriminated against Black applicants and residents<\/a> of their buildings. A consent decree settled the case, with Trump promising to desegregate. Trump and Cohen were brought back into court a few years later for failing to comply, but all that produced was an amended agreement and more oversight. <\/p>\n It will come as no news to you that Trump and his associates have built their entire lives on a foundation of escalating lies<\/strong>, each more inflated and mendacious than the last. Lots of people have drawn a parallel to what Hitler in Mein Kampf<\/em> termed \u201cthe big lie,\u201d a falsehood so enormous that when repeated and inflated, people start to believe that it must be true, for who would have the nerve to fake it? <\/p>\n We know the answer, and it\u2019s not just one mentally unstable, vengeful, ultra-greedy and narcissistic individual<\/strong>. It\u2019s a whole phalanx of morality-free sadists who have decided they have something to gain by advancing Trump\u2019s lies, and are very happy to see the rest of us paying the price. <\/p>\n I like to think of myself as discerning<\/strong>. I think things through, don\u2019t jump easily to conclusions, check my sources. But the last two lines of Arendt\u2019s quote have something to say about how I\u2019ve been affected by this epidemic of ravening lies. I haven\u2019t swallowed MAGA propaganda, but two things have changed for me. First, like almost everyone I know, I find myself doubting much more of what I see and read than I did say a decade ago. I\u2019m not denying the role AI plays in this change. More than once, I\u2019ve shared a photo that turned out to be fake. I\u2019m very careful about what I share now, and I often go to the authoritative source Snopes<\/a> to check things out. <\/p>\n But the larger impact is this<\/strong>: my default setting now is to disbelieve almost everything that comes from official sources, not just in the MAGA regime, but everywhere. I ask Cicero\u2019s famous question\u2014Cui bono<\/em>? (Who benefits?)\u2014constantly, and can almost always find an answer that reinforces my skepticism. This cultivates a default image of human beings as generally placing self-interest above veracity. I don\u2019t actually think this is true. I know many people who speak truth even when it puts themselves or someone they care about in a bad light, because they understand the importance of nurturing justified trust, and because they are willing to admit error in the service of the common good. <\/p>\n My first husband was a journalist<\/strong>. There were two quips he and his colleagues used to repeat regularly. The first: \u201cHow do you know a politician is lying? His mouth is moving.\u201d The second, which I first heard when he covered a national party convention in the run-up to a presidential election: \u201cThey ought to have a loudspeaker that blasts \u2018Bullshit\u2019 every thirty seconds while someone is speaking from the podium.\u201d<\/p>\n Journalists are famously cynical of course, and not without justification, but many of them are also honest and honorable. This disabling attitude has spread far beyond journalists. Nowadays, when I hear podcast pundits talk about the obstacles to a Republican defeat in the 2028 congressional elections, they invariably assert that the biggest one is that most people who aren\u2019t political junkies like themselves believe that all politicians are liars and crooks and pay as little attention as possible, perhaps not even bothering to vote.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re like me, it\u2019s a perpetual disappointment that remarkably smart and accurate things someone said 50 or 500 or thousands of years ago have failed to receive the attention and urgency they deserve<\/strong>. So I\u2019ll just say this: Hannah Arendt was right. No matter how discerning we think we are, we need to keep her words close to hand and constantly vet our own beliefs and actions in light of them. I\u2019d consider it a favor if you\u2019d share them now.<\/p>\n\n