By FASPE Chair David Goldman
We have become accustomed to “fact-checking” of our governmental leaders’ speeches, official documents, and unofficial social media posts, revealing countless inaccuracies.
We have become accustomed to government proclamations, declarations, and policies that deny real science, that are based on unproven foundations, and/or that rely on baseless, even shameless, inaccuracies and unfounded conspiracy theories.
We have become accustomed to what we euphemistically call “misinformation” or “disinformation.”
We have survived the debates among those journalists who rightly seek to privilege ethics over whether it was partisan to use the “L” word (lying) to describe some of the above—the inaccuracies, the misinformation, the disinformation.
Yet, and here is the point: we have learned to live with what this really is. It is pure mendacity. We have normalized mendacity. What does that say about us?
Mendacity. It’s not just lying. It is more. It is the tendency to lie. It is the proclivity to lie. It is lying without thinking about the lies. It is swimming in the waters of lies. It is not a single lie. It is not an innocent lie or even a malicious lie; it is being the main actor in the universe of lies. No euphemisms about misinformation or science denial or disinformation are necessary. That time, if it was ever right, has passed. It’s all of that and more, a big ball of mess.
Harvey Pollitt, that noted philosopher and keen observer of mankind also known to many as simply “Big Daddy,” best encapsulated mendacity. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Here is Big Daddy—it’s not quite Shakespeare, but it is no less poetic: "There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity. You can smell it. It smells like death…"
Mendacity is asserting fealty to the freedom of speech while seeking to silence political opponents (even, implausibly silly, comedians), fealty to freedom of the press while demanding control over what is written or who has access to the news, fealty to the separation of church and state while unabashedly promoting the supremacy of one religion, even advocating the teaching of that single religion in public schools, even canoodling with White Christian Nationalism.
Mendacity is arguing loyalty to the Rule of Law while flagrantly targeting political enemies, constraining the legal profession, and promoting undeniable incompetence and inexperience by placing obsequious toadies in the so-called Department of Justice.
Mendacity is pretending interest in the Constitution while denying the plain language of due process of law, the requirement for probable cause as a prerequisite for arrests, and the protected rights of citizenship (and, yes, even non-citizens).
Mendacity is acknowledging the existential risks of artificial intelligence while prioritizing technologies and technologists in a manner that favors massive political contributions, assisting and accommodating algorithms in those donors’ social media platforms that undergird and spread mendacity.
Mendacity is formulating policy to govern new financial instruments that is based on the certainty of personal financial gain for the policy makers.
Mendacity is branding yourself as the force that will “make America healthy again” while promoting an unremitting regime of anti-science led by a gaggle of conspiracy theorists, the unqualified and inexperienced, and those with a complete absence of expertise.
Mendacity is dismantling the civil service that constitutes the foundations of a functioning civil society, not with a scalpel that seeks economic rationality but with an axe that ignores expertise and risks local and global health and security.
---------------------
What is the point of this rendition of what is now, sadly, familiar evidence of the attacks on truth and the professions?
- It is a lesson in mendacity. It is surround sound, overwhelming. You can smell it. It smells like death.
- It suggests a corrupt strategy of unremitting flooding the zone as a means to drown out any single miscreance.
- It is a categorization of a broadside attack on the professions and professional ethics.
- It is evidence of the normalization of mendacity. And, we are accepting it all! What does that make us?
- Some of us are vocally and affirmatively willing participants and others are tacitly accepting it through inaction: even the doctors with political power who know better, yet hope to preserve their political positions; the lawyers who are so enthralled by their new-found status (that they cannot have imagined given how unqualified they are for their positions) who want to protect those positions and those lawyers who seek only to preserve their profits per partner; the business professionals who fear the consequences of opposition to their government contracts or prioritized political favor in Washington; the journalists who want to preserve their access; the clergy who seek peace in their congregations through silence or who are themselves intoxicated by political power.
- Yes, there are also many of us who do smell the odor of mendacity and are articulate in our disagreement and in our frustration in conversations among friends. Yet many of that group succumb to the lure of victimhood, to the seemingly overwhelming power of demagoguery, or to the branding cleverness of the mendacious–and do nothing. Are they to be congratulated for their anger and frustration as opposed to those who willingly accept the odor? This is normalization.
-----------------
What is complicity?
Is this 1933? Is this or that the Reichstag fire? Is this autocracy or a passing phase?
Those are questions for another day.
The question for those of us with influence by reason of our expertise, status, and roles—the professionals—is to identify and grab the opportunities, small and large, to act in opposition to the odor of mendacity.
The requirement for those of us who do not have the power and privilege of profession is to express trust in the professionals by demanding that those professionals search for opportunities to act, to ensure that the odor of mendacity does not become the odor of death.
We must listen to Big Daddy. We must not normalize mendacity. Professionals, all of us, listen to Big Daddy.
"Considering Professional Ethics" is a monthly essay shared in the FASPE e-newsletter.
Click here to sign up for future newsletters.
Comments are reviewed and approved before being published to reduce spam on posts. Please note that your comment will not be immediately visible for this reason.