Lies From Lying Lawyers Hornets Nest
January 31, 2020
Washington, DC
Lies From Lying Lawyers Hornets Nest
Just blocks away, Senators debate whether or not to hear witnesses in the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump.
The trial reminds me one of my all time favorite psychoanalytic jokes.
Trust me, there aren’t many, and here it is:
The psychoanalyst meets a veterinarian at a party and comments:
Your job must be a difficult one because your patients can’t tell you what’s wrong with them.
To which she replies,
True, but at least they don’t lie.
We human beings cannot help but lie, essentially all the time.
How are you?
Fine.
That’s the daily one.
Imagine the hundreds, likely thousands, of lies shared between fellow humans day-in and day-out.
Intending only minimal offense to lawyers, their work distinctly requires application of Nietzsche’s brilliant phrase,
language is for lying.
To see a prior, related post, click here:
http://psychoanalyzinglife.com/general/language-is-for-lying-impeachment-and-russia/
Why only minimally offensive to attorneys?
Because they are paid to advocate for their clients in (typically) contentious legal proceedings.
The good ones avoid outright lying. They lean as close to ethical boundaries as possible to make their case, to support their client, using laws and regulations as guides.
The bad ones lie obviously, and shamelessly.
Readers who watched the Senate impeachment trial in the last week witnessed both types of lawyers.
I defer identification of the good ones and the bad ones to you.
Meanwhile, and the real emphasis of this post and many prior ones, is on the importance of an impartial search for truth—in your own soul, in your relations with others, in your life.
One over-arching angle of the impeachment trial relates specifically to lying.
Trump claims his phone call to the Ukraine “was perfect.”
Last night, even conservative Senator Lamar Alexander disagreed, considered Trump’s actions “inappropriate.” He nonetheless opined it did not constitute an impeachable offense.
The sad, even painful truth is this:
The search for truth is a lonely endeavor.
It is almost always unimaginably complex.
It requires a certain kind of social isolation to minimize the influences of the Big Other on your thinking.
You must rely on multiple sources of information to obtain it.
You must think critically.
You might greet nearly every “fact” with doubt, at least initially, and then slowly, through reflection and deliberation, reach your own conclusion.
Like any other endeavor towards living an authentic life, it requires:
COURAGE
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