(Personal Note: For those of you who have not read this already on Facebook, my publisher called me a week ago with the surprising news that they are adding a hardback edition of my debut novel, A Brother’s Peace, to go with the paperback and E-version. Really excited about this. Also, if you’ve read it and liked it, a brief review posted on Amazon would be greatly appreciated. That affects how Amazon lists it.)
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about telling the truth and not telling the truth.
Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to do both – tell the truth and not tell the truth. One is not harder than the other. They’re equally easy to do.
Also, there are advantages to doing both. People who tell the truth earn the trust and respect of others, and on occasion are recognized or rewarded for being honest.
People who don’t tell the truth often avoid the bad consequences they would have suffered had they told the truth. They get promotions they wouldn’t have gotten, keep friends they would have lost, remain in a group that would have excluded them had they been honest. Sometimes they even avoid legal consequences they would have faced had they told the truth.
When it comes to politics, though, it seems that telling the truth brings few rewards while not telling the truth brings many.
Consider Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Had Trump been honest about his behavior with women, his business dealings, the way he uses people for his own benefit, about his admiration for dictators like Putin and Kim Jung Un, he would have never become President.
His not telling the truth is how he got elected.
More than that, not telling the truth about violating his oath of office and blocking the peaceful transfer of power is why he might become President again.
Contrast the lack of consequences for Trump never telling the truth with Joe Biden who does all the time.
Despite Republican attacks on his character, he’s as honest as a politician in today’s America can be. More than that, he doesn’t tell lies about people who criticize him. Nor do reporters spend any time counting the number of times Biden lies as they did with Trump because he doesn’t.
Yet, for telling the truth and being honest, Biden’s current poll numbers are no better than those of Donald Trump who has never told the truth in his life about anything.
Kind of curious, isn’t it? Probably says more about us as Americans than the politicians who lead us.
There is, however, something that might change what can be said about us as voters. It is the recognition that both telling the truth and not telling the truth are unconscious acts controlled by a person’s moral character.
In other words, it is in a person’s nature to be honest or not to be honest, based on having a strong moral character or a weak one.
Someone like Joe Biden is honest because that is who he is. The same principle is true for someone like Donald Trump. He doesn’t tell the truth because he doesn’t have the moral character to do so.
Which brings me back to where I started.
Telling the truth and not telling the truth are both easy because both are natural by-products of a person’s moral character. People with a strong moral character tell the truth because it’s in their nature to do so. People with weak moral character don’t tell the truth because it’s in their nature not to do so.
If we accept that as a fact of life, it should make us wiser in the votes we cast as we realize that it is foolish to expect a politician known for not telling the truth to start doing so. At the same time, a politician who has earned the reputation for telling the truth can be trusted to continue doing so.
It’s all in the nature of each because of the power of moral character or the lack thereof.
Because of our recent history and the current political divisions we have, becoming wiser voters may be our best hope for getting our country back on solid political and moral ground and saving our democracy.
linnposts.com 