Early after arriving in America TIME Magazine had a cover that simply said “Lies, Lies, Lies - Everyone is Doing It”. The article inside talked about how in America lying to each other - at every level of society - personal, business, politics, international - had reached plague proportions. That was 20 years ago! As a just-arrived Aussie I read the article and had no way to appreciate just how deep the problem really was. That took many years, many broken promises, many let-downs, disappointments and disillusionments before I too ‘knew’ what it was to be American in this society.

It has so often been that when Americans lie to me or when America lies to the world, it is done with no reflection, no sense of guilt or shame or wrongness. In fact so often the lier clearly lies not just to me but to themselves, where they delude themselves that the lie is the truth and deny that the lie is not the truth. The lies trip off the lips with uncommon ease while they look you in the face with open innocence and purity of motive delivering the blackest and most hurtful lies. There is no real sense of betrayal or loss of precious trust or friendship. There is therefore no need to take responsibility for the most grievous lie and a reactive aggression to any suggestion that they might in some way be accountable as a result of the lie.

For 40 years I have read and researched American history and for reasons I still cannot fathom America has made it not just national policy but national characteristic to lie to any and all in any time or situation where the lie releases it from the very responsibilities it has chosen to take on, and where it only can call to account others, never itself.
Since the Nation of New Americans broke every single large and small treaty it ever made with the Nation of Native Americans it has continued unabashed and unashamed in virtually every country it has touched including my own and others of its ‘friends’.

All of this I have known and it has been my growing experience and awareness over the last 20 years I have lived here is that that same characteristic lack of character has also permeated through and existed in the daily life and living of American people in their interactions and relationships with others. Not all, to be sure, but most, to be equally sure. Those who are actually honest and real are themselves only too aware of the lies that wash around them as a part of the air they breathe.

Lies, deceptions, broken promises and agreements, broken trust and broken words are the norm. Those perpetrating this behavior then go into avoidance and denial of it, and so take no responsibility for themselves, their choices or for the very words they utter.

So it follows that most relationships remain shallow and short-lived as everyone keeps moving on to repeat their patterns because they never stop to face them, see them, own them and change them. 

As a result the only recourse to the illness is to use the law to get revenge or a sad victim based version of justice, hence the level of personal interaction dysfunction can be easily demonstrated and measured by the simple fact that America, with 5% of the world’s population, manages to support 50% of all the lawyers in the world. Where divorce is almost always a bitter dogfight of snarling teeth and blood on the floor, where everyday relationship breakups are usually sudden and absolute with no talk or resolution, or are cat fights of blame and recrimination.

And then everyone is surprised and asks questions like: “how can I have happy relationships?” Huh? Well, start getting honest with yourself and others, and the starting place is to acknowledge to others that you are still learning and practicing how to be honest and real, and you would like their encouragement to do that by them doing it too!