I went back to the White House last night. It was time for a holiday check-up on the state of truth in the union. (My most recent visit — the fifth — is described here: www.dailykos.com/...)
It turns out the current president is still failing to track the avalanche of lies that are making our democracy so unsafe. So I decided to help him out (again) by putting up the Truth Tracker.
Nearby, a solitary singer was singing ‘Silent Night’. And why not? It was a festive time of year, a festive time in a festering year. Behind the White House, the National Christmas tree had been lit. In bars all around town, depressed citizens were getting lit.
The singer had a microphone and a big speaker, so the Night wasn’t exactly Silent, but it got me thinking: Can silence itself contain a lie?
The writer Mary McCarthy once said of the writer Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” So a single, tiny word can be a lie. But silence?
I believe the answer is ‘Yes’, because the current president’s lying thoughts are silent until they’re uttered, and come out as lies. His lies are already lying in his silent thoughts. (To give him the benefit of the doubt, he may also look in a mirror sometimes and silently think: “You are an evil man”. This would NOT be a lie.)
Anyway, the singer soon wished her listeners ‘Peace and Goodwill’, and went away. A true silence descended on the grounds. And, for that moment at least, truth made a rare visit to the White House.