Perhaps it happened on a boring day at Mt. Vernon. Nothing to do but wander around the plantation and watch the slaves work; not much excitement in that! Then the little George wandered into the barn and there he saw it: an axe. Now there were plenty of large trees scattered along the Potomac but they were more of a challenge than he fancied. Then he saw it . . . a measly little cherry just waiting for a sharp blade.
We all know the rest of the story; it was among the first we heard as preschoolers about the importance of telling the truth. Now history fails to record whether there were witnesses or why he chopped down the tree, but it did not go unnoticed. The implication was that one of his parents confronted him with it and he uttered those famous lines, “I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree.” What punishment, if any, was meted out goes unreported. Had CNN been on the job it would have been “Breaking News” for a whole day: “Future President Caught in a Lie!”
The whole thing is probably apocryphal (a lie) as may be our first President throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac as well as carving his initials in Natural Bridge. No matter; the point is made. George Washington always told the truth. I suspect that is not correct but life in those times was subject to less scrutiny than today.
Lying seems to have become the default for much of humanity, certainly for politicians. One wonders if it has always been so. Why does it happen with such frequency? There are countless reasons.
Foremost is to cover guilt. George took the high road but we require an oath in court to assure honesty; we all know how well that works. Consider a former President who skirted the truth (lied) by answering a direct question with, “That depends on how you define ‘is’.” Far more often than not, the truth comes out in the end. Nonetheless, who among us has not covered out guilty tracks with a lie?
Once when teaching a class at the city jail about lying (what a fertile field that was), I made the point that everyone lies. An inmate interrupted and said, “That ain’t so. Some people don’t never lie.” Who might that be, I challenged. “Chaplain Edmunds! She don’t NEVER lie.” I had no response to that but was grateful that in this case, he was most likely right.
An equally compelling reason to lie is to make oneself look better. The facts are altered, or even fabricated, to improve your acceptance. When this occurs repeatedly an interesting phenomenon asserts itself. The falsehood assumes the proportion of fact. It’s called “The Big Lie.” If repeated forcefully and frequently many begin to believe it is the truth.
No where was this more evident than in Nazi Germany. Good and decent people fell victim to this technic. Today, we should be less vulnerable because of the persistence and honesty of the news media. That is not to say they are sometimes guilty of bias but generally, excluding the tabloid press, they will publish the truth as they see it.
What about those perpetrating the lie? There are the pathological liars who genuinely do not distinguish between truth and falsehood. More common are those among us who actually come to believe that what they are saying is true or, if not verifiable, it ought to be.
We are in the midst of a political season where truth has been a frequent casualty. When that happens then trust is quickly lessened. Trust is like a tree: It takes years to grow but only a few minutes to destroy it.
The trustworthiness of many is in question. It behooves us to carefully evaluate who we can believe and act accordingly. If little George had lied about the cherry tree he would not be the paragon of honesty we believe him to have been. It’s a childhood story that is worth carrying into adulthood . . . even into politics.
Hayden Hollingsworth
