Imperial Lies

The mystery of the craft flying over America has me thinking about the danger of official lies.

The mystery of the craft flying over America has me thinking about the danger of official lies.

Crafts the size of automobiles are swarming over America’s airspace. While they’re focused over New Jersey, reports have them elsewhere in America too. This has been going on for weeks. They’re not just flying over residential areas, but also sensitive locations like military installations. They’ve obstructed flights around airports. They’ve been sighted over American military bases in the UK.

Lest you think this is just a few hysterics seeing things, mayors and state legislators are going on the record seriously concerned. New Jersey’s governor spends time at night with federal investigators using sophisticated equipment to identify craft. Members of Congress are demanding answers. Someone is apparently flying hundreds of advanced unfamiliar craft over America each night, including sensitive military areas, for some unexplained purpose. The American government is saying nothing.

I can’t think of a single explanation for this that makes me entirely comfortable. In times like this, I’d like to trust the officials of the government we elected to tell us what they know. What else were the billions of tax dollars we spent purchasing hardware and expertise to identify threats over America for? What our government has so far told us, however, is worse than nothing. Essentially, they’ve tried to gaslight us.

Last week, after public pressure forced a White House press briefing, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby shockingly claimed essentially nothing was happening. It was all in people’s heads. He said government was unable to confirm any drone activity. The events they investigated were mainly ordinary aircraft. He essentially implied everyone reporting hundreds of craft flying over America every night were wrong or lying. This week FAA, DOD, DHS, and the FBI followed this strategy with a similar statement.

At the same time, intelligence and security agencies held a classified briefing with the House Intelligence Committee about the situation. Why hold a classified briefing if there’s nothing classified going on? Also, why have so many prominent legislators like Senators Blumenthal, Hawley, and Gillibrand gone to the media to say the federal government isn’t telling them the truth? Why did the FAA ban drone operations in New Jersey, stating the government may use “deadly force” if the drones are judged to pose an “imminent security threat.”

Essentially, the federal government is, for some reason, hiding information and lying to the people about what it knows. The federal government must have some idea what’s going on. Surely, they can track these craft, where they’re coming from, and what they’re doing. Instead of telling the American people who elected them the truth about the situation, they’ve chosen to gaslight the public that there’s nothing here to see.

Isn’t this normal and expected? Don’t we expect the government to keep classified secrets from the public? Is this really something Americans need to know?

This isn’t harmless. It’s actually the most dangerous form of official lying, and it’s gotten far too common for the American government to brazenly lie this way. A large part of why America is so politically unstable at the moment is exactly because this sort of lying has become so common that it’s almost unremarkable. It needs to stop, or things will not end well.

To understand why this such a problem, you must understand that there’s three distinct kinds of official lies and this kind is the worst.

THREE CATEGORIES OF OFFICIAL LIES

Since we all know governments lie, people tend to dismiss official lying as just an unfortunate part of democracy. Some government lying, in fact, is expected and not particularly dangerous. There’s a reason the most common stereotype of politicians is they’re liars. Some kinds of lying is human and an inevitable part of politics. Other kinds of lying, however, is very dangerous.

There are three different categories of government lying:

• Private Lies

• Sanctioned Lies

• Imperial Lies

Of the three, imperial lies are the most dangerous.

Private lies are the sort of ordinary lies humans tell to get things they want or to avoid accountability for mistakes. They’re infuriating, but human and reasonably harmless to democracy. In the high-stakes game of politics and governing, flawed people have incentives to lie to get things they desire or escape accountability for mistakes. Ambitious politicians are driven to get re-elected. Governments want to avoid accountability for their mistakes and blunders. This is why candidates make promises they have no intention of keeping. It’s why they slander opponents with rumors they know aren’t true. It’s why they parse words, leave impressions they know are false, and shade truth. It’s why governments pretend to have achieved great things they didn’t, and twist reality to escape responsibility for dumb and damaging things they did. This is “read my lips, no new taxes,” “I didn’t have sex with that woman,” and “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

In a flawed world of humans, this sort of lying will always happen in any high-stakes enterprise, including government, and democracy is resilient enough to handle it. The public, of course, should harshly punish these sorts of lies whenever they identify them, and they shouldn’t elevate unrepentant liars to high office, but eliminating private lies will always be a game of whack-a-mole.

Sanctioned lies, on the other hand, are state lies, but the kinds we as citizens want our government to tell for our collective benefit. These lies would be damaging, except we’ve sanctioned them ourselves as citizens. We want the government to keep secrets about certain matters, and we’ve implicitly approved these lies through democratic elections.

Citizens need to know certain things to control their democracy, but not every detail about how these things are getting done. We must know, for example, that our government possesses nuclear weapons, and in roughly the situations they might use them. We must know this to weigh in democratically and, if we desire, change these policies through elections. We don’t, however, need to know the nuclear codes or where the nuclear submarines currently are located. Revealing such details would risk accomplishing the very things we’ve asked our government to accomplish in our name.

Most state lies are these kinds of sanctioned lies. We sanction the government to lie about issues of foreign policy, since they don’t directly affect our internal democracy while revealing details can hobble international competition. We don’t need to know the specifications of every secret aircraft. We don’t need to know what’s on a particular military base. We don’t need to know the details of every military operation. Sanctioned lies are why we have classification and official secrets in a democracy. We know our taxes are spent on these things, that the officials we elected have oversight over them, and if we don’t like what they’re doing we can alter them through elections. Things that would be a problem if the government was simply hiding them from us are acceptable because, in reality, they’re things we’ve collectively decided to hide from ourselves.

Imperial lies are the dangerous lies. They’re lies government officials use to manipulate their own citizens against their knowledge or consent. An imperial lie is a lie government tells to hide things from its people in fear that, if the people knew what they were doing, they might put a stop to it. It’s enacting policies people have never had the opportunity to weigh in on or approve. It’s hiding crimes people would punish officials for if they learned about them. It’s attempts by public servants to run operations on their own people to make them believe false things or form opinions they otherwise would not hold. Official lies are when government treats democracy like a game to manipulate to get the results officials want.

In other words, imperial lies are lies meant to get around, subvert, or manipulate democratic controls. They are attempts by government to control their own people and manipulate democracy.

What makes imperial lies so dangerous is they treat the people like subjects instead of citizens. They’re officially democratic governments acting like rulers instead of servants carrying out the public’s orders. This damages the foundations of democracy, and it’s a death sentence to any democratic state.

IMPERIAL LIES AND DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY

A democratic society like America relies on a story for its legitimacy—it’s a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

I’ve written before about the importance of legitimacy to maintain a successful government and society. Every government—not just democracies—needs a basis for its legitimacy and claim for authority. Power alone will get people to do the minimum to avoid punishment, and only while you’re looking. A flourishing society needs something more. If you want people to participate in your society, work hard, obey your laws and norms, create things, and work together pulling in the same direction, you need a basis for legitimacy. Legitimacy is essential to create prosperity, stability, creativity, innovation, safety, and order.

Different kinds of societies have different claims for their authority—God placed them in charge, there’s a Mandate from the Heavens, loyalty to the Party is necessary to carry out the Revolution, and so on. Democratic societies rely on a very ambitious claim: they’re not governments ruling over subjects, but institutions through which self-governing citizens select public servants to carry out their will. This is why democratic societies outperform every other form of government. People will do a lot if they believe they’re engaged in a project of self-determination instead of just serfs obeying rulers. They’ll obey laws, even when no one’s looking. They’ll work hard at tough jobs, even knowing they’ll never make as much as their bosses. They’ll take risks, innovate, and build things. They’ll even willingly sacrifice their lives to defend the state. That’s why democratic societies are so much more prosperous, innovative, and safe than societies under any other form of government.

Imperial lying cuts this vital cord of democratic legitimacy. It’s an effort by officials to control the people, instead of obey them. It’s a means to trick people, so officials can rule as they think best without the people’s interference. That isn’t the actions of a servant. It’s the actions of a ruler. That’s a death sentence for a democratic state. This isn’t a naïve claim about good government. It’s a hard-nose practical claim about the inevitable result of undercutting your society’s foundation. A democratic state that engages in imperial lying is cutting its own throat.

In the short term, imperial lying makes it easier for the state to accomplish whatever it thinks it needs to do. In the long term, it severs the mechanisms that make that society prosperous, stable, and successful. On the surface, a democracy working under imperial lying still looks vibrant. Through manipulation of the people, officials keep all the mechanisms and appearances of democracy going, without the messy problem of holding officials in check. We still hold elections and select Congresses, and those Congresses still hold votes—just like the Roman Senate kept its rituals going long after the Roman Empire replaced the Republic. Underneath those rituals, however, officials now get to rule the way they think best, while the people remain compliant and cooperative. It’s a recipe for stagnation, decline, instability, and disorder. People gradually figure out the government is no longer operating through their consent. Their voting doesn’t affect the levers of governing. They no longer have access to the information they need to control leaders. People start questioning whether their democracy is just a paper democracy or real one—is it still a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people, or are they subjects being ruled?

At some point, the final straw snaps, and the whole thing comes apart. In fact, I would say a large part of why America is becoming so unruly and ungovernable is because too many such straws have already snapped.

GOVERNMENT LYING AND REFORM

This drone issue is hardly unusual, which is the problem. There’s been an awful lot of imperial lying going on lately. As America moves through one after another crisis, officials have gotten comfortable using their power as stewards to manipulate the people in order to achieve their own goals, instead of to inform and follow the people’s lead. This isn’t the same as following the mob or ignoring expertise. It’s about servants seizing authority that isn’t theirs to take like Janissaries or a Praetorian Guard. The people are supposed to control the government, not the government control the people. We can’t do that without the government telling us the truth.

The good thing is America appears to be sick of this dynamic. Increasingly, when officials engage in laughable imperial lying, the public rolls their eyes and scoffs. Citizens are demanding truth and pushing back, as well they should.

Among the most critical issues for any movement for reform is winning back people’s trust. There’s good reason the American people no longer trust their government, leaders, or society. Those institutions have not been trustworthy. A major reason is because of the rampant culture of imperial lying. Those who run things are starting to recognize it’s destabilizing the system, but their solution seem to be further ratcheting up their manipulation—ramp up the controls to push back against unwelcome and dissonant messages. That won’t make the problem go away, but simply confirm it’s a real problem and make it worse.

The only true solution is to address the root cause: cut out all the imperial lying. If you want the benefits of a democratic society—the innovation, prosperity, flexibility, and building that democracy brings—you can only get it if the people have good reason to believe they’re actually ruling themselves. Officials can only earn the people’s trust by acting obedient and trustworthy. This should be one of the most important goals of any movement looking to shore up America’s institutions, restore national stability, and unleash a new era of national renewal.

How do you propose we address imperial lies in government? Join the conversation in the comments.