Lies

Trump began his presidential campaign using the slogan, "Make America great again." 

Just a casual review of American history will reveal that America was, at that time, just as great as it ever was. Trump seemed to be referring to an imaginary "golden age" of America that was easy for a white male to think back on with a certain nostalgia. Memory plays tricks.  Did everybody's neighborhood really look like the set of Leave it to Beaver? I'm not sure our lawn was ever mowed in a timely fashion, especially since I was the one in charge of doing it. So, did your mom really come out to the yard where kids played carrying a tray of cookies and a jug of fresh milk?  Not that I remember. If you do, are you sure it wasn't just that one time?  Were all married women happy and fulfilled by the opportunity to serve their husbands? Or their bosses? There were no poor people? Black people were living as well as all of us white people? No one was working too long hours for too little pay? 

Trump's campaign began with a lie. It was the implicit idea in the phrase "make America great again"--that we needed change because we lost this imaginary greatness. 

His term in office ends in a lie, too, that the presidential election was rigged, that votes for him were stolen. 

Without making a moral judgement about lying, in general, it seems like common sense to say that if what you say doesn't line up with what is really true, you must be dysfunctional to some degree. That's all. Lies aren't really sustainable. 

"Evil has no foresight."  -Zoroaster