What we expect from politicians, if nothing else, is that they tell us the truth, however painful it may be. At least that's how it was until recently. But, as we have verified, once again, in last week's elections, no one is for the job. Telling the truth is nothing more than an antique to be avoided.
It would be necessary to add to the multiple threats known to all that embitter our existence and even the future of our planet, that of the persistent corruption of language. A lie well placed and repeated ad nauseam is worth a thousand truths. After swallowing the “collateral damage” thing, we are inundated with nonsense such as “alternative facts”, “inaccurate statements”, “inaccuracies”, “inaccuracies”, or shameless “changes of opinion”. The time for the spoiled and applauded oxymoron has arrived.
As is known, Trump's lies and trolls are measured by thousands. So much so that he has established a school, one of his most advantageous students being the reviled -for now- Boris Johnson. In fact, there is no self-respecting politician who does not fall into Trumpism without complexes, starting with the progressives and nationalists on the set. Not even the hitherto accepted half-truths sneak into the bloody arena of the circus of social networks. You have to liquidate the enemy in any way. This is boxing before the -debatable- rules of the Marquess of Queensberry.
As happened with Trump, there are those who are dedicated to counting the lies launched by our politicians. But despite the commendable work of the fact checkers, our leaders, no matter what, continue to lie to our faces as if nothing had happened. They go to television debates with the purpose of exchanging lies, insults and stupidities.
Truth, like religious faith, is in the doldrums. And at all levels. What's more: our capacity for self-deception no longer has limits. So, politicians, by lying to us, are just flowing with the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times.
Love for one's neighbor fades before the overwhelming push of hatred in its purest form. We are discovering how pleasant it can be to feel a stark hatred, no matter how much it is based on mere ill-intentioned rogues. It would seem that Christianity, which invites us to turn the other cheek, does not look very good in this desperate society.
Goebbels rides again; George Orwell's prophecies come true to the letter; the little deniers are consumed in the flames that they themselves do not want to see; goodness is on its way to setting up a Holy Inquisition that you laugh at the rack and the pegs. The whole world gladly surrenders to that "lie to me" that Johnny Guitar (Stirling Hayden) releases to Vienna (Joan Crawford), in Nicolas Ray's film.
Too often the truth stings; it is the verbal rot that comes out of the mouth of someone who has had too much to drink. For this reason, in these sober times, we manipulate the language to the point of turning the verb to lie into an innocuous misrepresentation of the truth.
We inhabit the era of post-truth, postmodernity, the liquid society, artificial intelligence, Brexit and the Catalan process. There is nowhere to hold on. A lie is answered with a fatter one. They even make us a little funny. The Internet and social networks are an invitation to liars, who are all of us, to lie like scoundrels. Nobody cares about the truth, that unbearable killjoy that bothers us so much.
Written in the sixth century BC. C., the Epimenides paradox puts us in our place. It is this: "All Cretans are liars." If you take into account that he was Cretan, well…
