Happy Honesty Day

Seriously. Would I lie about this?

Today is Honesty Day in the United States, thanks to author M. Hirsh Goldberg who created the holiday in the early 1990s while researching his The Book of Lies: Fibs, Tales, Schemes, Scams, Fakes, and Frauds That Have Changed The Course of History and Affect Our Daily Lives. Why April 30? According to Wikipedia, he intended it as a balance to April Fools day, and it is also the anniversary of the first inauguration of George Washington in 1789.

It is a shame it never really caught on, given that the lofty purpose of the day is to encourage honesty in politics, relationships, consumer relations and historical education. It was also intended to urge politicians to stay away from lies and tell the truth.

Good luck with that one. I would consider it an excellent start just to get politicians to not restate obvious lies which no one believes, not even their supporters. It’s this little dance they do, saying “oh no I never meant that” when even the people who like them are pretty sure that was exactly what they meant.

I recently became aware of one such historical example that really bothered me. Right after Ronald Reagan received the GOP nomination in 1980, he spoke at the Neshoba Country fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil right’s workers were murdered in 1964 and the ensuing cover-up by local authorities forced the federal government to intervene. Then-nominee Reagan devoted some of his 1980 speech to the importance of state’s rights and the evils of federal involvement in local issues. He never mentioned the murders or civil rights and columnist Bob Herbert of The New York Times wrote, “Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair.”

However, almost no one said so. “Oh no, he didn’t mean that,” was the a common response. Really?

Fast forward thirty-six years to now, when GOP candidate Donald Trump agreed to address the Suffolk County Republican Committee in Patchogue, a small village on Long Island which was the scene of a notorious hate crime eight years ago when a variety of incidents of escalating hostility towards immigrants culminated in an immigrant being stabbed to death.

Given the extent to which Trump’s campaign targets immigration, I don’t think anyone believed that his appearance at this out the way place was random.

The day of the event, news sources reported that about a hundred people assembled before a small memorial to Marcelo Lucero, the murder victim, while anti-Trump protestors gathered at another spot. Trump gave his usual sort of speech, including his “Who’s going to build the wall?”  shtick that appears to delight his fans and makes the rest of us want to puke. Luckily the speech was short and everyone went on their way with no violence. Word was that it felt like police outnumbered attendees and protestors.

I was made aware of the similarity of these two incidents on the Rachel Maddox show. What struck me was the irony of how obvious the purpose of the choices were in both cases, and yet how easily the truth was denied when it was apparent to all. Have we gotten that used to lies in politics?

I thought maybe we had, and that set me off on an internet search with results that surprised me. Are you curious which politicians tell the biggest lies the most? It turns out that professional fact checkers can shed some light on that. Check out this article in The Rolling Stone.

What do you know…. The truism that all politicians lie equally turns out not to be the truth either.

Happy Honesty Day!