[Peace-discuss] Lying leaders

[Bob Illyes]

Karen wrote "What I don't get is how human beings stop lying to
themselves...[,to] get to that point of honest personal reflection?
... how do we get our leaders to do this and stop their madness?"

I'm not sure that it is possible to get a person who has been
responsible for great evil to stop lying, because confronting
the true nature of what they have done would likely leave them
insane, and they would sense this and pull back out of self-
preservation. It is probably a waste of breath to argue with or
listen to them. That's the bad news.

The good news is that what they think of themselves is irrelevant
once they have been exposed. Like all pathological liars, they
are dangerous only if given the benefit of the doubt.

With a relatively normal life, it is different. After some shock,
it is common for folks to resolve to live a better life and to make
some restitution for their failings and foolishness. But if the
foolishness cost thousands or millions of lives, I have trouble
seeing how it would be psychologically possible to confront what
one had done. Robert McNamara, defended his evildoing to his last
breath, as far as I know. I suspect that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush
will do the same. But eventually nobody will listen to their nonsense,
with a little luck and a lot of work.

Bob