I gave up on the "Powell misleading....yadda yadda " thread long ago; no doubt great and sanguine subjects are being thrashed and fleshed out, and ponderous political philosophies are being judiciously flogged, and high-minded bullshit tossed about like a small float in an ocean storm - but I digress.
For the more sober souls languishing on the sidelines of this most portentous debate, I offer an essay read by one Mark Twain in the grand year of our Lord, 1882. Read it and then rejoice.
On the Decay of the Art of Lying (http://www.boondocksnet.com/twaintexts/art_of_lying.html)
Le Misanthrope
And waxing further afield, I submit the follow excerpt from Oscar Wilde's "The Decay of Lying". [The full play is available here: The Decay of Lying (http://eserver.org/books/intentions/the-decay-of-lying.html)]
CYRIL. Writing an article! That is not very consistent after what you have just said.
VIVIAN Who wants to be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, the tedious people who carry out their principles to the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of practice. Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word " Whim." Besides, my article is really a most salutary and valuable warning. If it is attended to, there may be a new Renaissance of Art.
CYRIL. What is the subject?
VIVIAN. I intend to call it "The Decay of Lying: A Protest."
CYRIL. Lying! I should have thought that our politicians kept up that habit.
VIVIAN. I assure you that they do not. They never rise beyond the level of misrepresentation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to argue. How different from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb responsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind! After all, what is a fine lie ? Simply that which is its own evidence. If a man is sufficiently unimaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie, he might just as well speak the truth at once. No, the politicians won't do. Something may, perhaps, be urged on behalf of the Bar. The mantle of the Sophist has fallen on its members. Their feigned ardours and unreal rhetoric are delightful. They can make the worse appear the better cause, as though they were fresh from Leontine schools, and have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakeably innocent. But they are briefed by the prosaic, and are not ashamed to appeal to precedent. In spite of their endeavours, the truth will out. Newspapers, even, have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon. One feels it as one wades through their columns. It is always the unreadable that occurs. I am afraid that there is not much to be said in favour of either the lawyer or the journalist. Besides what I am pleading for is Lying in art. Shall I read you what I have written? It might do you a great deal of good.
CYRIL. Certainly, if you give, me a cigarette. Thanks. By the way, what magazine do you intend it for?
VIVIAN. For the Retrospective Review. I think I told you that the elect had revived it.
CYRIL. Whom do you mean by "the elect"?
VIVIAN. Oh, The Tired Hedonists of course. It is a club to which I belong. We are supposed to wear faded roses in our buttonholes when we meet, and to have a sort of cult for Domitian. I am afraid you are not eligible. You are too fond of simple pleasures.
CYRIL. I should be blackballed on the ground of animal spirits, I suppose?
VIVIAN. Probably. Besides, you are little too old. We don't admit anybody who is of the usual age.
CYRIL. Well, I should fancy you are all a good deal bored with each other.
VIVIAN. We are. That is one of the objects of the club. Now, if you promise not to interrupt too often, I will read you my article.
CYRIL. You will find me all attention.
VIVIAN (reading i?' a very clear, musical voice). "THE DECAY OF LYING: A PROTEST.--One of the chief causes that can be assigned for the curiously commonplace character of most of the literature of our age is undoubtedly the decay of Lying as an art, a science, and a social pleasure. The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction. The BlueBook is rapidly becoming his ideal both for method and manner. He has his tedious ' document humain,' his miserable little 'coin de la creation,' into which he peers with his microscope. He is to be found at the Librairie Nationale, or at the British Museum, shamelessly reading up his subject. He has not even the courage of other people's ideas, but insists on going directly to life for everything' and ultimately, between encyclopaedias and personal experience, he comes to the ground, having drawn his types from the family circle or from the weekly washerwoman, and having acquired an amount of useful information from which never, even in his most meditative moments, can he thoroughly free himself.
"The loss that results to literature in general from this false ideal of our time can hardly be overestimated.
People have a careless way of talking about a 'born liar,' just as they talk about a 'born poet.' But in both cases they are wrong. Lying and poetry are arts--arts, as Plato saw, not unconnected with each other--and they require the most careful study, the most disinterested devotion. Indeed, they have their technique, just as the more material arts of painting and sculpture have, their subtle secrets of form and. colour, their craftmysteries, their deliberate artistic methods. As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection. But in modern days while the fashion of writing poetry has become far too common, and should, if possible, be discouraged, the fashion of lying has almost fallen into disrepute. Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into something really great and wonderful. But, as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into careless habits of accuracy "
CYRIL. My dear fellow!
VIVIAN. Please don't interrupt in the middle of a sentence. "He either falls into careless habits of accuracy, or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and the wellinformed. Both things are equally fatal to his imagination, as indeed they would be fatal to the imagination of anybody, and in a short time he develops a morbid and unhealthy faculty of truthtelling, begins to verify all statements made in his presence, has no hesitation in contradicting people who are much younger than himself, and often ends by writing novels which are so like life that no one can possibly believe in their probability. This is no isolated instance that we are giving. It is simply one example out of many; and if something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, Art will become sterile and Beauty will pass away from the land.'
End excerpt
-Zeno
I listen to a portion (perhaps five minutes or so) of a small campaign speech by Senator Kerry a long while back. It was amazing what he was promising to do, besides making every older American perfectly healthy with an astounding health care plan, everyone would be at work with excellent pay and benefits, schools bursting with money and ripe minds for the dispensation and sponging up of knowledge, and peace would reign in the heavens as the new millennium would be ushered in on the wings of a snow white dove. All I needed to do was vote for Him.
Grand and Glorious lies all. And he knows it, but he must find someway to get elected by the throbbing masses and lying is the best political art form available. If you have enough money and can lie in an engaging and appealing manner you have a chance. Bully for Kerry. I wish him luck but I think he needs to beef up his charm more to counter balance his long wrinkled face.
Some added advice to Kerry from Mark Twain:
“Never waste a lie; you never know when you may need it.”
“Carlyle said, ‘a lie cannot live.’ It only shows that he did not know how to tell one.”
The above blurb is one reason I have deliberately bumped this post up into the light of day. The other is to make note of the amount of hand wringing and desultory posts that some are flinging into the heavens crying ‘woe is me and woe is you’ because someone may have lied to them or the general public. Such childish braying is usually hardly worth noting – but with an election year in this grand democracy looking ever more eventful and contentious and with megalomaniac ambitious at stake – I submit that lying will have to be ratcheted up to almost new and startling levels.
I hope Queen Hillary is taking notes for her 2008 run. If She does her homework, She should be able to outdo all others in this field. And then Billy Boy Clinton can have another field day in the White House laying various debutantes, but this time unencumbered by political office. Some people have all luck!
-Zeno
George Rice
01-17-2004, 07:55 PM
Thank goodness only the democrats and liberals lie!
[ QUOTE ]
Thank goodness only the democrats and liberals lie!
[/ QUOTE ]
Not true, Chris Alger has documented the lies of 'The Other Side' on this forum and I think Al Franken took on some conservatives in a recent book.
I did not implied that only the 'Liberals' or 'Democrats' lie. After all, I'm a Liberal.
I was just shining a light on both sides of the field for the forum as a whole.
Did not May West say 'Goodness has nothing to do with it".
Zeno - An apolicial misanthrope.
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