When Liars Try to Tell the Truth

There are consequences to lying, and one is that people won't believe you even when you are telling the truth. This is so well known that there has even been a fable about it for millennia.

Some examples...

I believe there are endangered species.  I believe that we should make at least some effort to preserve them, for a couple of reasons. Yet now it turns out that the infamous snail darter never existed.  It is genetically identical to other fish in other similar environments, and there are apparently plenty of them.  But a dam wasn't built, and just now that water would have been useful in SoCal.

I believe climate warming is real, and that human activity is responsible for at least some of it. Yet it turns out that despite the widespread belief that it is causing more and more powerful cyclones/hurricanes, the trend over the last fifty years is neutral, and in one ocean actually a bit less. Tell people that and they will insist you are a climate denier. Claim that the temperature figures are being jacked to make them look worse and you will get sued and ruined by people who have deeper pockets than you.

Many people, especially Boomers, still think the world is becoming overcrowded and don't know about plummeting Total Fertility Rate. At least in the medium-term, it's going to be a lot of problem for a lot of countries.

Covid-19 was real and the vaccines do work, but now there's a lot of people who don't believe in any vaccines and we are seeing a return of conquered diseases.  How did that happen? Well, there was something of a conspiracy to lie about the origins for openers, insisting that it must be bat soup instead of the lab next door that was one of the few working on coronavirus gain-of-function. When Trump cut off international flights he was called racist and Democrats made a point of attending Chinese New Year. Then when everyone was feeling cooped up, a spring protest just made for liberals to get out and walk around for an afternoon pops up around George Floyd - a sad case and worth a look and some complaining, but not a poster child for racial injustice.  Too ambiguous. Kamala Harris said just before the 2020 election that she wouldn't trust any vaccine that came out under Trump. Donald deferred to the states a great deal and his symbolic actions were sometimes destructive. But the important thing was that he must be blamed - and more people died. Oh gee... too bad, mate.

No one thought that any kind of coup was under way on Jan 6, 2021. People worried that the protest might get out of hand and some people might get hurt or even be killed. But mostly people laughed nervously. The few out of the many had some dangerous characters but were mostly ridiculous. News outlets got lots of up-close action photos. Did they get those at the other protests that year? Or in Ukraine?  Or of Mexican cartels? One guy carried off a lectern and my son said "It's clear he was just taking a political stand." Trump's behavior was atrocious, yes. He made things worse when he had at least some power to make them better. But The Insurrection? Really? Yet that is the approved pearl-clutching terminology now, as if we all suddenly holed up in our houses and started living off canned food in fear. 

DEI has some nice ideas behind it, but it should not be an overriding value, or we get dead people in Los Angeles. And Chinese universities start outcompeting us in key areas.

Consequences of lying.