The anatomy of a single lie

In this "post-truth" era, what's the significance of one itty-bitty falsehood?

It seems like everyone is concerned about “misinformation” and “fake news,” but why? What does it do? What are its effects upon us? This is the “anatomy” of a lie that I’m interested in — how an untruth reverberates through us and shapes our society.

In order to trace these effects, I want to look at a single lie. It’s certainly not the biggest or most important one — from what I can tell, it’s just a drop in the bucket. Of course, when you read about it you’ll likely feel vindicated or attacked, smug or upset, depending on which side you’re on. My point is definitely not that one side is right and the other side is wrong. Both sides lie. Both sides employ the same tactics. But not only both sides — each one of us. We want so badly to be right, to have our side win, that we’re willing to accept and advance all sorts of “facts” that in the end turn out to be fictions.

I am aware that using the word “lie” is itself a little contentious. Most untruths are simply exaggerations and distortions, and we often call them something like “false or misleading statements” instead of lies. In this article I too will use these other terms, but I’m also calling them lies because I think they are. It points to the heartbreaking humanness of it all. We are twisting the truth in order to serve our own interests. To call it merely misleading or inaccurate doesn’t touch the very basic fact that we’re just not telling the truth.

Let’s start then, with the lie in question.

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On October 5th, 2021, the New York Times published a series of short articles describing the Congressional testimony of the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. Earlier that day she had testified at length about a number of problems at Facebook (how its algorithms amplify extreme viewpoints, the harmful effects Instagram is having on teenagers), but at the top of the list, at least for the New York Times, was its inability to control the spread of misinformation. Here’s how the Times described it at the start of its first article:

Facebook and other online platforms like YouTube and Twitter have helped turbocharge the spread of false information about the coronavirus, vaccines and supposed cures, like the livestock deworming drug Ivermectin. The company said in February that it planned to remove posts that contained inaccurate statements about vaccines from its platform and has since last year been vocal about removing coronavirus misinformation.

What is so striking about this statement is just how pointedly it critiques the spread of misinformation, while simultaneously containing its own misinformation — the description of ivermectin as a “livestock deworming drug.”

Here are the facts: Ivermectin is a generic drug typically used to treat parasitic infections in both humans and animals. During the pandemic, it has been used widely in Latin America, as well as elsewhere, as part of their national guidelines for treating Covid. Whether or not it’s actually effective is still being debated within the scientific community, but over the last 5 or 6 months a number of Americans who don’t want to get vaccinated have nonetheless opted for ivermectin as a treatment for Covid. Some of these people have indeed taken the veterinary version of the drug, very likely because the human version wasn’t available to them.

So while it’s true that there is a veterinary version of ivermectin, to portray it only as a medication for animals is to misportray it. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like the most mind-blowing deception, but that’s the point. It’s just a slight twist of the truth. But why do it? What are its effects? First, let’s look a little closely at the distortion itself.

The fact that it’s a drug used for both humans and animals isn’t a question to anyone. Almost everything I know about ivermectin has come from the New York Times, so it’s certainly not a question to them. Here’s how it was described at the beginning of an article from last March: “Ivermectin is typically used to treat parasitic worms in both people and animals.” Then, after making that clear, the rest of the article is simply a discussion of the human version of the drug.

But the Times’ portrayal of ivermectin began to bend in August when a new article started out this way: “Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug commonly used for livestock, should not be taken to treat or prevent Covid-19.” Seven paragraphs later, they balanced out the initial statement by saying that the drug is “also formulated for use by people to treat parasitic worms.”

Then, in early September, the Times went all in. In their daily newsletter, The Morning, they gave this description of an article from that day’s paper:

“The podcaster Joe Rogan, who has been critical of vaccination, tested positive. He said he had taken ivermectin, a veterinary deworming drug that experts consider unsafe.”

By this point the Times was completely misrepresenting the reality. If a reader didn’t know anything about ivermectin, they could only come to the conclusion that Joe Rogan had taken a veterinary deworming drug. How else could one interpret that statement? But the article they were referencing never claimed any such thing. It never even raised the question, “Which version of the drug did Joe Rogan take?” Why not? Presumably because it would look entirely foolish to even speculate that Rogan, the wealthiest and most successful podcaster on the planet, had taken the veterinary version. While it might be hard for someone living in some remote country town to get their hands on the human version, I don’t think Rogan would ever have a problem.

Joe Rogan portrayed as a little wild and wooly in the NYT’s September article (photo by Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images)

Which brings us to the present day. Now whenever the Times even mentions ivermectin it’s almost exclusively described as a “livestock deworming drug.” This is a huge change from the article last March, mentioned above, where only eight months ago ivermectin was discussed in an entirely different light. That article made statements like “neither the proponents nor the critics have had much rigorous data to support their views,” and even concluded the article by giving the last word to Harvard researcher Dr. Regina Rabinovich “who noted that she was ‘totally neutral’ on ivermectin’s potential usefulness. ‘I just want data because there’s such chaos in the field.’”

So why the change? Why did the Times move from describing ivermectin as a normal, human medication that a Harvard researcher could be “totally neutral” about, to a livestock drug, presumably being taken by the mentally unhinged? It’s not due to some new classification by the scientific community, but simply because the people taking it aren’t getting vaccinated and many of them are right-wing. It’s political. They’re trying to shame their enemies.

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And now we come to the heart of the story — what are the effects of distorting the truth in this way? How does it work upon the people who encounter it?

First I want to start with the New York Times, and especially the authors who portray ivermectin as merely a livestock deworming drug. Though their political enemies would impute terrible evil to such people, I think that’s hogwash. I assume it’s extremely subtle at this level, simply because I know what it’s like to lie. We try our very best to hide it from ourselves; we try not to look at it. As the poet William Stafford put it in “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”:

“For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break….”

Of course such a mental shrug is not entirely unconscious, but when it does rise up into awareness it’s usually justified by saying it’s for a good cause, that “the thrust of what I’m writing is right, even if there are one or two small discrepancies.”

Next, there are the loyal readers, everyone who’s on the same exact page as the Times. These are the people that the phrase is actually written for and, as we know, it incenses them and gives their confirmation bias a happy ping. When they read such a phrase they know that their side is good and the other side is evil, their side is smart and the other side is a bunch of idiots. It emboldens them. They lash out on Twitter or Facebook, or with a friend at work, and make some snarling comment about those moronic “horse paste eaters.” That’s the term they use. The Times uses the much more lofty “veterinary deworming drug” (or the less subtle “livestock deworming drug”) and their readers translate it into the proper ammo needed for the ground battle.

And then there are those who already hate the New York Times — who think it’s all fake news. When they hear the Times slant ivermectin in that way it also hits their confirmation bias. It’s no surprise to them, though it still makes their blood boil — “Those goddamn liars, how can anyone believe them…” But of course, it’s not likely that too many haters even read that article, as they’ve already dismissed the Times as writing just that kind of rubbish.

So the misportrayal, the lie, pushes both sides farther apart and makes the possibility of discussion all the more impossible. How could we ever discuss and weigh the results of a new clinical trial of ivermectin when we’ve been pushed into such bitter antagonism? Both sides are ready to brawl in the streets. Nobody (that is besides Dr. Rabinovich at Harvard) is “totally neutral” and would be able to just accept new evidence that flew in the face of their already passionately staked position. (That said, the mainstream media did shift from ridiculing the lab leak theory to taking it seriously, though it could have been a far more productive transformation if it had contained a bit more self-reckoning, if they’d just asked — What else are we dismissing, simply because Trump or his followers have promoted it, that might actually turn out to be reasonable? Always just doing the opposite of your enemies isn’t actually the best way to get at the truth.)

The Times is obviously not alone in this. Everybody exaggerates and distorts, but what’s the good in it? Everyone claims to be concerned about “saving lives,” but does anyone really think more people will be saved by mocking and vilifying them? I don’t think anyone does. I think instead that our love for the truth and our desire to save lives is too often overpowered by the much more concrete desire to win the argument and crush our enemies (and the enemy is really just anyone who disagrees with us — perhaps most often it’s just our parent, our partner, or our friend). I certainly feel this desire welling up in me in every argument I have.

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Most of us are probably on one side or the other of this fight (and if it’s not this fight, it’s another — there are thousands of battles waging). But belonging to a side, to a group, can create a tension within us: We identify with the group but also with our own ideals, and if the group betrays those ideals then we’re torn. We have to choose: Will we stay faithful to what we believe in, or will we stick by the group?

Because to stand for the truth when my group is lying means to stand outside my group. But to betray the truth and stand by my group is to stand outside myself. It is to break from my own aspirations. When someone in my group does something I disagree with — i.e. when the Times distorts the truth — but I stand by it, then it creates a fracture in my self-identity. It lames me.

And so, more often than not, we just try to ignore our group’s lies. We don’t report them in our group’s news and we don’t tell them to each other, so no one has to experience this painful contradiction in themselves. This is why we rarely find anyone admitting that their side did something wrong — that they told a lie or committed some violent act. We might be the most outspoken peace-lovers, but when our side’s president drops bombs or when our side’s protesters lash out, we often stay strangely quiet.

And from one point of view, it makes complete sense why we do this. We want our side to win. Our side is good — it is the truthful side. The other side are fascists. So what if we have to tell a few lies and some people get hurt along the way? This is war after all. We’ll be wholly truthful when it’s over.

But the war will never be over unless I end it in myself. I can’t wait and imagine I’ll live according to my ideals when the struggle is won, because life will always be a struggle. I either try to live according to my ideals now, or I don’t.

To do this means separating ourselves from our groups, which can be a little lonely. But it’s also not lonely because then we get the whole world back. Of course everyone in it is now somewhat flawed, but also everyone in it has the desire within them to strive for the good. How do we do this? By striving to be rigorously honest with ourselves, to not exaggerate, to take the news with a grain of salt, to live with a little uncertainty.

Ultimately it comes down to what we’re fighting for. If I want more people on my side because I want to win and I need numbers, then it doesn’t matter what I do or how I manipulate those people. But then the world I’m creating is a world of cattle — people who look outside themselves to be told what to think, feel, and do.

It might not feel so consequential, but it is. Hannah Arendt described this phenomenon in her essay Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship. She described how almost everyone in Germany supported the Nazi regime because they simply exchanged one set of values for another. Those who didn’t were those who worked to determine their own values, who were actively “engaged in that silent dialogue between me and myself,” who recognized that “as long as we live we shall have to live together with ourselves.” Of course we all hope that in such a situation we’ll have the strength to think for ourselves, but if that’s what we truly hope for, shouldn’t we be trying to support people in doing so right now?

Because if I really want people to think for themselves then I need to stick to the truth. I need to try to not sensationalize things in order to get a rise from people, to not manipulate them so they’ll feel what I want them to feel. Such a form of journalism wouldn’t try to make people agree with a certain viewpoint and bring people over to my side — it would try to put people back on their own feet. Is that possible? Is it possible to just try to characterize things and then leave people free to make up their own hearts and minds? Can we fight for that? Not for our side to win, but for every individual to become themselves?

Of course, the same criteria applies to the article you’re now reading. Am I succeeding at leaving you free? Probably not very well, but maybe you find yourself slightly more awake to your own thoughts, slightly more able to wrestle with your own feelings, even if they’re somewhat mixed up and uncomfortable.

All we can do is try. And we will fall short. And when we do, we have to try to face our shortcomings as well. If we don’t, then every lie, every shrug, will just take us farther away from what it means to be truly human. But every attempt to speak the truth will bring us closer. That is the real battle. William Stafford said it best:

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.