Pinocchian truths

Sometimes I would wish that all politicians were Pinocchios, for then we would know when they were lying. For the story of Pinocchio tells us that his nose grows when he tells a lie. It would be a better instrument than a lie detector, which is far from reliable. Moreover, which politician would allow to be connected to a lie detector? It is so that in On Certainty Wittgenstein writes:
“80. The truth of my statements is the test of my understanding of these statements.
81. That is to say: if I make certain false statements, it becomes uncertain whether I understand them.”
Then the politician could say: “Sorry, I made a mistake. I didn’t understand what I said.” But then there would be no lying, but only wrong understanding and misunderstanding. However, what Wittgenstein was talking about was the objectivity of facts. He was talking about the relationship of facts with reality. When a statement in the Wittgensteinian sense is not true, it means that the supposed relationship with reality does not exist. However, lies are intentionally false statements about reality, so we know that they are false and nevertheless we claim that they are true. We could say that a lie has a relation to reality in the opposite way. The liar certainly knows what he or she is talking about and understands what s/he is saying. In this sense lies are true. We could call them Pinocchian truths.
Montaigne had a clear view on what I have called here Pinocchian truths: “In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have other tie upon one another, but by our word. If we did but discover the horror and gravity of it, we should pursue it with fire and sword, and more justly than other crimes.” (Essays, I-9: Of Liars) However, there are no Pinocchios. Pinocchio was a fictional character in a children’s novel. Moreover, lies are often difficult to recognise as such, which today in the time of the internet has become a real problem. Since words bind people together, as Montaigne rightly says, – also false words do – lies are often used for this purpose or for justifying actions. Often it works, or at least it often works at the moment that the lie is told, for as Montaigne also says: “If falsehood had, like truth, but one face only, we should be upon better terms; for we should then take for certain the contrary to what the liar says: but the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand forms, and a field indefinite.” (ibid.) That’s why it is so difficult to disprove a lie and to unmask a liar, regardless of the problem that it is often difficult to discover what the real facts are. On the top of that, what is a lie for one is a truth for another, as Montaigne explains in Essay I-14, while there are also truths and half-truths, or, if you wish, lies and half-lies. So, even if there were Pinocchios, should their noses know when to grow?
That’s why people construct or invent reasons when they want to get things done or want to do things, and need other people for that or need to justify their actions. Politicians are such persons. Is it a wonder that they are often mistrusted? In 1964, during the years that I became politically conscious, the so-called Tonkin incident took place, when North Vietnamese warships were said to have attacked US warships, which was soon unmasked as a lie. It was a pretext for the USA to send openly American troops to Vietnam. It appeared to be a big mistake, for the US army drowned in the swamp of a guerrilla war. In 2003, a US-led coalition army invaded Iraq, on the pretext that the Saddam Hussein regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. Also this claim was false. It led to the destabilisation of Iraq and the Middle East. These are just two striking examples, but cases of this kind abound in history. At the moment that I write this, Israeli and American aircraft are bombing and have bombed Iran, saying that this country is in possession of nuclear weapons, even though the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) denies that this is the case, just as did the CIA till a few days before the US attack took place. Moreover, this happened at a moment that negotiations between the EU and Iran were still going on. Now, in view of the just explained historical context, should we believe this claim this time? There are reasons to doubt it. And what will bring this attack to us? Even if we do not doubt the intentions of political leaders, even then, as Montaigne says “’Tis usual to see good intentions, if carried on without moderation, push men on to very vicious effects.” (Essays II-19: Of liberty of conscience). But shouldn’t we doubt? As the former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands once said: “The lie reigns”.