We all grew up either in a family or knew families in which truth was not their highest priority. When a family member failed a class in school, wrecked the family car, or was involved in a teen pregnancy, the grown-ups in the family swiftly moved into cover-up mode. With the talent unseen since the Nixon plumbers’ Watergate raid, the family quickly moved into action.
They created a false narrative. Johnny was sick when he took his final exam. Sally crashed the car to avoid a dog. What pregnancy…Betty Lou went to visit her cousin in New Mexico for two months, and Billy is doing fine, practicing for his next football game.
Everyone screws up. The question is, how do families and individuals react? We may need to protect teenagers. They may need to have their moral juvie records sealed. The grown-ups set the example for the rest to follow, for better or worse.
However, what about adults? Are they allowed to cover up their crimes? We see this drama unfold when families act like the Pollitt family in A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Families are desperate to hide uncomfortable truths. THEY HAVE AN IMAGE AND A FAMILY NARRATIVE TO PROTECT, and they will do anything to protect it. Mendacity is almost always a learned behavior. Just as parents pass on blue eyes to their children, they also pass on patterns of behavior, both good and bad, that survive for generations.
In A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the family patriarch, Big Daddy, repeats the term “mendacity.” While this term is not commonplace, it accurately describes a behavioral web of lies and deceit. When mendacity becomes the dominant metaphor for a family or an individual, it becomes a vicious cycle that not only persists but sucks more people and things into the endless loop of deception.
Mendacity also leaves the shadow of moral hypocrisy. Like cancer, mendacity and hypocrisy metastasize to the body of the individual and family. There are so many examples of similar behavioral cancers that it is impossible to choose just one. Among the most dramatic gaps between a family’s moral image and their mendacity, failed religious leaders stand out. Again, there are too many to list, but let’s use the evangelists, the Bakker family. Younger people can Google “Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker” to catch up.
Celebrity televangelists have such a strong charismatic appeal to their followers that they suspend their “truth barometers.” Even when the barometer’s alarm blares, warning everyone that a tornado is coming, their true believer sit frozen in their chairs watching the dramatic twister blow out the windows. After the destructive cyclone passes through, their followers go into rationalization mode (a psychological term for “we have to create an alternative reality to counteract the ‘real’ reality). They usually double down with excuses like, “it was an attack from Satan” or “they fell into the Hollywood trap of those Liberals”.
While we were taught many patriotic phrases in school, one that stuck with me was learned outside the classroom. It was Superman’s famous motto, “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” Maybe it was not endorsed by our Founding Fathers, but it seemed to me then, and now, a good phrase for Americans to live by.
What happens when the “American Way” sacrifices the terms truth and justice on the altar of a political dogma? What happens when America’s functional motto becomes, “Trump Mendacity and Bondi Justice is the American way”?
The phrase, “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme”, is my recurring theme. Let’s hope that the current Trump-Bondi regime repeats like the regime of D.C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana KKK in 1925. He literally controlled virtually the entire state government and most of the local governments. He boasted, “I am the law in Indiana.” For a few years, this statement was true. I have mentioned in this blog in the past.
Mendacity and injustice can take hold in almost any state. Who would think that a state that fought on the Union side would become a bastion of the KKK 60 years after the Civil War? The KKK’s modus operandi was to extort community leaders and businessmen. Join the KKK, or something bad will happen to you. Most small businessmen and workers were risk-averse, so they joined. Of course, many were racists who hated immigrants and Catholics, so joining the KKK was not a stretch.
After a sizeable proportion of the white men in Indiana joined the KKK, the Grand Dragon literally thought he was above the law. He fully tested his belief. After many rapes that were swept under the rug, he finally got caught with his pants down. He caused the death of a young woman. He raped and mutilated the woman. Despite his overwhelming personal political power in Indiana, he was tried and convicted of second-degree murder. A Republican Governor eventually pardoned him after serving about 30 years in jail.
What is the moral of this story?
Eventually, people who do not follow Superman’s motto, commit one or more of the seven deadly sins. Their sin, like causing the death of an innocent woman due to their uncontrolled lust, becomes so odious that even their true believers are suddenly stunned. The complacent small businessmen-types who became KKK members to protect themselves stop paying their tribute to the monster. The empire built on fear and greed collapses.
When a person, family, or nation believes they live above truth and justice, they eventually get caught with their pants down. An innocent person is tragically killed by a regime’s standard operating procedure that implicitly supports one or more of the seven deadly sins. They will try mightily to make us believe a false narrative, but eventually even the most successful liars will fall. Eventually, good people, like the jury in Indiana that convicted D. C. Stephenson, will cast off their politeness and sophisticated reserve and take the appropriate action. They will vote out the active and passive monsters who thought they were above the law.
Of course, there have always been people who believe in Superman’s Credo. For example, @PoliticsGirl. Her YouTube short follows:
On the other hand, as quickly as people like D.C. Stehenson and Tammy Faye Bakker fall off the front page and disappear into oblivion, others take their place. In an infinite loop, they have their moment in the spotlight and believe they are above the laws of God and man.