The despotic nature of truth in politics

Watching the  lawyers on the Mueller inquisition being interrogated themselves is to to privy to spinmeisters at work in the art of of self-serving prevarication. It is as if they are inadvertently paying homage to Nietzsche (Human, All too Human) or Oscar Wilde's (‘The Decay of Lying’) in a defence of  fabulation or plain lying.  In this discussion one is not referring to the Big Lie, the Orwellian reversal of the truth typical of totalitarian societies.

So what did these 'greats' claim about telling the truth.  ‘Convictions,’ Nietzsche said, ‘are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.’ Elsewhere, he went even further, arguing for the paradoxical need ‘to recognize untruth as a condition of life’. The most trenchant consideration in the matter of  a lack of candour, relativising  of truthfulness, porky pies (Cockney rhyming slang for lies) is probably to be found in Hannah Arendt’s celebrated, 'Truth and Politics’ and ‘Lying in Politics’. ‘The deliberate falsehood and the outright lie, used as legitimate means to achieve political ends,’ she soberly notes in the latter, ‘have been with us since the beginning of recorded history.' Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.’ It follows that 'truth' can not be construed or deified as a criterion of ultimate value.  Well, not in politics.

Wilde’s argument may seem a bit whimsical in that Wildean way; Arendt is the more compelling  as her argument is buttressed by a more fundamental concern, which she calls the ‘despotic character of truth’  the modes of thought and communication that deal with truth, if seen from a political perspective, are necessarily domineering; they don’t take into account other people’s opinions, and taking these into account is the hallmark of all strictly political thinking.’ Thus ever since Plato ridiculed the role of mere doxa,  a term used in connection with seeming, or unsubstantiated and contingent opinions, in political life, defenders of the truth have portrayed politics as the realm of expediency, compromise, hypocrisy, manipulation and mere appearances. to still the unruly turbulence of the public sphere and bring order into chaos and to quell the cacophony of discordant chatter .  Don't you know.

For when it enters the political realm truth ‘peremptorily claims to be acknowledged and precludes debate, and debate constitutes the very essence of political life. Arendt’s brief for lying as being akin to imagination, To put the matter somewhat differently, politics is not corrupted by rhetoric, image-making, surface appearances and public relations spin; rather, it is constituted by them. Its fragile and shifting consensuses are based on the arts of persuasion, not logical deduction or scientific demonstration.

So are these lawyer lying or are they just being 'political' with the truth. The truth is I don't know, and I am being honest about that.