If you could eliminate one thing from the world, what would it be?
I’m not talking about people here. As much as I would love to live in a world without Donald Trump, there are countless people as bad or worse.
I’m not talking about television, although a world in which it never existed might be a more intelligent one.
I suppose I could go for the big kahuna and say sin, but that might be too ambitious and also raise questions about what was sin and what wasn’t.
I could say murder, but there are instances in which killing someone might save someone else’s life. Again, ambiguity rears its ugly head.
Meanness is another biggie, but it’s another one of those things with ambiguity.
No, I think if I could eliminate one thing from the world, I would choose dishonesty.
Specifically, lying.
Actually, I wouldn’t eliminate 100 percent of lying, just the ones with the intent of gaining some advantage over someone or making someone else feel bad.
“How do you like my hat?”
“Oh, it’s nice.”
Lies like that would be OK, as would praising someone’s cooking effort that didn’t turn out as intended. The whole idea is not to make someone feel bad when they have put themself on the line.
But most of the lies people tell are used to gain an advantage or to avoid trouble.
Richard Nixon lied about Watergate, Bill Clinton about his sexual escapades.
Then of course there’s the Big Guy.
Imagine a world in which Donald Trump had to tell the truth.
The silence would be deafening.
Especially from right-wing media figures like Alex Jones. who spread vicious lies about the Sandy Hook school shootings. He said it was faked, that the children who were killed never really existed and that the grieving parents were really actors.
In the first of the lawsuits against Jones spring from Sandy Hook, the jury awarded the parents who sued Jones nearly $50 million.
Jones will probably find some way to weasel out of paying $50 million, and the people in tinfoil hats who love him will convince themselves he did nothing wrong.
But imagine if he couldn’t lie. Imagine if his argument against gun control was that yes, what happened at Sandy Hook was horrible, but it was no reason to go after responsible, non-criminal gun owners.
The problem with that is that then Jones becomes just another squawker on the right.
He becomes ordinary.
He becomes boring.
Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.