Summerbook #13: On Lying and Politics

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 On Lying and Politics, two essays by Hannah Arendt

I love this cover though

This little book contains two very long essays: "Truth and Politics" and "Lying in Politics."  Both take questions of the Vietnam War and apply them to a wider context.  "Lying in Politics" is a direct response to the release of the Pentagon Papers.

Arendt is probably a little above my head.  I have ambitions to read her larger works, but I don't know that I even managed to plumb the depths of these short ones.  "Truth and Politics" talks a lot about what kinds of truth there are and how they might be manipulated or if truth is even very findable.  It's less concrete, more abstract than the second essay.

"Lying in Politics" meditates upon the question of "how could they?" in relation to Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers,  why and how politicians lie, and particularly focuses on lying as a method of trying to make reality conform to the liar's wishes (which sounds very toddler-esque; a very small child doesn't so much lie on purpose as say what she wants to be the case at the moment).  Or, the liar may end up thinking his own lies are true.  

...one may conclude that the more successful a liar is, the more people he has convinced, the more likely it is he will end by believing his own lies.

...it apparently never occurred to them that there are limits to the resources that even this country can waste without going bankrupt.

It was quite interesting, and I probably didn't understand it too well.

 

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