Philosoraptor’s Winston Smith has a pair of items that really impressed me: Why won’t they just tell the truth? and Why won’t they just tell the truth, part 2. From the latter:

…as we all know, lies become more difficult to confess the longer one maintains them and the more elaborate they become. Lies tend to accrete; new lies are required to defend the flanks of previous lies, small lies become extensive tissues of lies, and consequently small liars become big liars. And it’s harder to confess to being a big fat liar than it is to confess to having told a relatively small, run-of-the-mill lie. Though this doesn’t explain why they chose to lie in the first place, it does help to explain why, relatively far down the path of mendacity, they have elected to stick with their increasingly implausible fabrications.

There’s lots more, and as I said above, I find it really, really impressive. Not because he’s calling Bush and his people liars, though after trolling through some righty weblogs lately, it’s comforting to me to return to the land where people aren’t busy applauding the beautiful fabric and stunning cut of the emperor’s new clothes. No, the impressive thing is the way he goes beyond the snark and vindictiveness that lots of people, myself (obviously) included, feel toward Bush and Co., and focuses on his own attitudes and what it would take to restore civility and honesty to the discussion.

Such willingness to turn a critical eye on onesself is rare, but Winston Smith routinely displays it.

Anyway, like I said: impressive.

This entry was posted by jbc on Thursday, April 1st, 2004 at 5:57 pm and is filed under the_usa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.