Loyalty Pushed To Pathological Limits: Why Lying Has Become Part of the Fabric of Our Society

Unless I’m mistaken, it was Arlene Allen, at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who left the very first comment on this blog when it came on line almost exactly eight years ago, and I’ve been eagerly anticipating her insights ever since.  In response to my piece about our Orwellian society, she writes:

The whole lies, facts and alternative facts discussion has made me wonder, like so many others, what is at the heart of this?

An area of exploration was suggested to me by the frequent use of the words partisanship and loyalty. It occurred to me that the current use of these words has evolved, and they now have a more pejorative connotation than formerly, when situations are viewed from an ethical perspective.

One of the classical examples of so-called harmless lying is telling our significant other that they look good in some new way and we don’t actually believe it. The argument goes along the lines of little to no harm is done, and as a consequence we rationalize that it made them feel good and we saved ourselves from the potential of a minor conflict. For some reason, this thinking has expanded into areas where considerable harm is done to others, and yet it is still rationalized as a good thing because we are loyal to out tribe, even when our tribe is wrong.

In my personal business life, similar conflicts occasionally arose wherein those above me requested loyalty to a concept that was ethically bankrupt. I must admit that I did not often have the strength of a Gandhi and state they were wrong. I would generally recuse and refuse to be a part of whatever skulduggery was afoot. Unfortunately, I had to pay the rent. Our current party politics, under the guise of partisanship, is co-opting its members into an evil that would make those who raised us blanch.

Whatever is afoot in DJT’s mind to provoke this continuous stream of prevarication might be an interesting subject area of study, but I see it as more problematic that many members of his party are willing to lie in nothing short of soul-damning quantities and label it loyalty. If this is indeed the new definition, then Americans need to learn to f@#$ loyalty.

Great points here, Arlene. I would hazard that almost all of us have compromised our integrity at some level–at some time–out of the pressure to be loyal; I know I have. So, insofar as that’s true, what we have here is a difference in degree and not kind.

However, the degree here is completely over the top, and a lot of this is based, IMO, on the bizarre phenomenon that facts have ceased to matter. It’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” being played out in living color, right in front of our eyes.

I know I’m not alone in saying: I never thought our society could degrade to this point; this has caught me completely off-guard.