CHAPTER 4: The DEMOCRATIC (R)EVOLUTION We are better than we realize we are. For the first time, we can now create institutions of governance that elicit our best. Copyright 2026 by Paul L. LaClair
Value for Sunday of Week 18 in the season of Growth
Being Honest
Honesty is a rudimentary part of order.
- We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square. [Michelle Obama]
- . . . honesty is the 1st chapter in the book of wisdom. [Thomas Jefferson]
- Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure. [attributed to James Altucher]
Time has come for some heavy lifting. We have identified our goals and addressed the fundamentals. Now we turn our attention to challenges that many people never master or even address. Honesty is prime among them. The human animal has a remarkable capacity for deception and self-deception. If you dare to point out that someone is not being honest, you are likely to be dismissed as a crank. In politics, people often are inclined to support the candidate who tells them what they wish to hear at the price of the truth. This state of affairs is not conducive to human well-being in the long term and may not even be compatible with the survival of most of the human race.
In a vision of an ideal future, children would be trained in a sound system of values from an early age, based on a commitment to the worth and dignity of all persons. Until now, the domination of religion by theology has made this unattainable. Perhaps one day that will change.
Real
True Narratives
Harriet Jacobs offered this droll observation about the dishonesty of American slave owners.
“Not far from this time Nat Turner's insurrection broke out; and the news threw our town into great commotion. Strange that they should be alarmed when their slaves were so ‘contented and happy’! But so it was.” [Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Chapter XII, “Fear of Insurrection”.].]
Narratives in book form:
- Janet Malcolm, Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial (Yale University Press, 2011): the murder trial of Mazoltuv Vorukhova.
- Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer (Knopf, 1990): the Jeffrey MacDonald murder trial, a journalist and betrayal
- Stuart E. Eisenstat, President Carter: The White House Years (Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin’s Press, 2018): Jimmy Carter told the truth about many things, especially our dependence on oil. It was not what people wanted to hear.
- Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (Simon & Schuster, 2020): “It exposes Carter’s weaknesses as well as his undervalued strengths, his reverberating failures as well as his unsung triumphs. Above all, it shows how the qualities that propelled Carter to the pinnacle of American politics also kept him from rising to his historical moment.”
- Kai Bird, The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter (Crown Publishing, 2021): “Bird blames Carter’s basic honesty for the fact that most Americans missed (the hard work and accomplishments) about his presidency.” [Blaming the messenger was easier than addressing the problems.]
- David Maraniss, A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father (Simon & Schuster, 2019): “. . . Maraniss has used his prodigious research skills to produce a story that leaves one aching with its poignancy, its finely wrought sense of what was lost, both in his home and in our nation. It is at the same time a book that, like his family, never gives in to self-pity but remains remarkably balanced, forthright and unwavering in its search for the truth.”
- Philip Rucker and Carol Lennig, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America (Penguin Press, 2020): “They’re meticulous journalists, and this taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date.”
- Lacy Crawford, Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir (Little, Brown, 2020): “. . . is a purposefully named, brutal and brilliant retort to the asinine question of ‘Why now?’ What Crawford experiences at the hands of an esteemed institution with the money, power and connections to operate as a ‘minor nation’ is downright crippling.”
- Michael Gorra, The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War (Liveright, 2020): “We need a prophet — a voice to call up the nation’s oldest stories, a reckoning with what was so that we might understand what is.”
- Richard Rhodes, Scientist: E.O. Wilson: A Life in Nature (Doubleday, 2021): “He eventually became an activist, one of the few scientists who dared to leave the comfort and security of the ivory tower. The trigger was, Rhodes explains, a report in the late 1970s, published by the U.S. National Research Council, which stated that the world was losing one species a day, rather than one a year as most biologists had previously believed. Rhodes describes how Wilson made it his mission to create public awareness of this mass extinction and loss of biodiversity.”
- Liz Scheier, Never Simple: A Memoir (Henry Holt & Co., 2022): “. . . Liz Scheier writes about life as the child of a master manipulator.”
- August Kleinzhaler, et. al., eds. The Letters of Thom Gunn (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022): “Gunn was not a confessional poet, but he spilled his guts in rowdy, funny, filthy, intensely literate correspondence.”
- Gary Indiana, Fire Season: Selected Essays 1984-2021 (Seven Seas, 2022): “It requires no genius to be disgusted with our culture these days, but Gary Indiana expresses his own disdain with a rare intelligence. The essays . . . are erudite, discomforting and often caustic — and almost always spot on, which is a little sad because they tell us such ugly true things.”
Some honest histories:
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (Harper, 2003).
- Jill LePore, These Truths: A History of the United States (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018): “We need this book. Its reach is long, its narrative fresh and the arc of its account sobering to say the least.”
- Ilan Stavans, A Most Imperfect Union: A Contrarian History o the United States (Basic Books, 2014): “The prose drives the narrative, and imagery enhances the view along the journey. The illustrations add emphasis to Stavans’s historical interpretation, often enlivened by comedic flourishes that leaven his message that 'America does indeed have an ugly side: When abundance becomes opulence, morality often falls by the wayside.'”
A free press as an indispensable part of an honest and open society:
- David E. McCraw, Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (All Point Books, 2019): “McCraw is rightly proud of his role in defending The Times in so many controversies.”
- Carl Bernstein, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom (Henry Holt and Co., 2022): “Carl Bernstein’s book, which is ultimately a eulogy for print newspapers, is a passionate reminder of exactly what is being lost.”
When dishonesty is or may be desirable, and ethical
- Matti Friedman, Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel (Algonquin Books, 2019): “At times, these first-person jaunts feel awkward, but others achieve their intent, to evoke a scene or individual more vividly. It’s a fine line, but over all Friedman succeeds in portraying the ‘stories beneath the stories’ that acted as bedrock to the rise of the Mossad and serve still as a window into Israel’s troubled soul.”
- John F. Callahan and Marc C. Conner, eds., The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison (Random House, 2019) “. . . presents this writer in all his candor, seriousness, outrage and wit. Nearly all of these letters are previously unpublished. What brings them alive is that while they brood on the largest of issues — identity, alienation, the political responsibilities of the artist — they’re earthy and squirming with all the vital things of everyday experience.”
- Javier Cercas, The Imposter: A True Story (Knopf, 2018) when is lyng ethical?
On the dark side, small scale:
- Mary V. Dearborn, Ernest Hemingway: A Biography (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017). “His final failing, she concludes, was his inability ‘to tell the truth, even to himself.’”
- Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Churchill’s Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill (W.W. Norton & Company, 2021): “Churchill, in this telling, was not just a racist but a hypocrite, a dissembler, a narcissist, an opportunist, an imperialist, a drunk, a strategic bungler, a tax dodger, a neglectful father, a credit-hogging author, a terrible judge of character and, most of all, a masterful mythmaker.”
On the dark side, large scale – misinformation and disinformation:
- Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020): “. . . a colorful history of modern Russian disinformation”.
- Cailin O’Connor and James Owen, The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread (Yale University Press, 2018):”The purveyors of disinformation exploit certain basic cognitive biases. The most often cited is confirmation bias, which is the idea that we seek information that confirms what we already believe. . . . even scientists, who by definition are seeking the impartial truth, can be swayed by biases and bad data to come to a collective false belief.”
- Richard L. Hasen, Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics – And How to Cure It (Yale University Press, 2022): “Hasen . . . posits that the increase in dis- and misinformation is a result of what he calls “cheap speech,” a term coined by Eugene Volokh, a law professor at U.C.L.A. The idea is that social media has created a class of speech that is sensational and inexpensive to produce, with little or no social value.”
- Moisés Naím, The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century (St. Martin’s Press, 2022): “. . . the modern combination of technical empowerment and economic disempowerment has resulted in a frontal attack on a shared sense of reality.”
- Emily Nussbaum, Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV (Random House, 2024): “With muscular prose and an exacting eye for detail, Nussbaum . . . outlines how such shows united high and low art into a potent concoction, ranging from ‘celebreality’ soap opera to grand social experiments that explore romance, competition and ethics. Their secret sauce: placing people in contrived situations to spark entertaining, telegenic, revelatory behavior — often through conflict or embarrassment.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
Honesty:
- Christian B. Miller & Ryan West, eds., Integrity, Honesty, and Truth Seeking (Oxford University Press, 2020).
- Christian B. Miller, Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue (Oxford University Press, 2021).
- Eric G. Wilson, Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015): on the value and limits of honesty
Ethical deception:
- Nicholas Rankin, A Genius for Deception: How Cunning Helped the British Win Two World Wars (Oxford University Press, 2008).
- Brooke Kroeger, Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception (Northwestern University Press, 2012).
From the dark side - deception:
- Sara E. Gorman, The Anatomy of Deception: Conspiracy Theories, Distrust, and Public Health in America (Oxford University Press, 2024).
- Lixing Sun, The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars: Cheating and Deception in the Living World (Princeton University Press, 2023)
- Timothy R. Levine, Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception (University of Alabama Press, 2020).
- Thomas L. Carson, Lying and Deception: Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010).
- Brooke Harrington, ed., Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating (Stanford University Press, 2009).
- James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Harvard University Press, 2001).
- Barton Whaley, Turnabout and Deception: Crafting the Double-Cross and the Theory of Outs (Naval Institute Press [reprint], 2016).
- George A. Akerlof & Robert J. Shiller, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception (Princeton University Press, 2015).
- J. Bowyer Bell & Barton Whaley, Cheating and Deception (St. Martin’s Press, 1982).
- Ziyad Marar, Deception (The Art of Living) (Acumen, 2008).
From the dark side - side-deception:
- Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections On Self-Delusion (Random House, 2019): “She writes beautifully about her desire for self-transcendence and how it led her to writing, a tool she uses to understand herself.”
- Herbert Fingarette, Self-Deception: With a New Chapter (University of California Press, 2000).
- Eric Funkhouser, Self-Deception (Routledge, 2019).
- Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life (Basic Books, 2011).
- Eugene D. Genovese & Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
- Adrian Bardon, The Truth About Denial: Bias and Self-Deception in Science, Politics, and Religion (Oxford University Press, 2020).
- Charles Cruickshank, Deception in World War II (Oxford University Press, 1980).
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
- Street Fight, an exposé of Sharpe James’ corrupt and abusive political machine in Newark, and his electoral defeat
- The War Tapes: three U.S. soldiers record their tours of duty in the second Iraq war
- When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts: a documentary critique of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel (1967): “A mother learns that her son is dead. José Arcadio’s lifeblood can and must go on living until it can bring Úrsula the sad news. The real, by the addition of the magical, actually gains in dramatic and emotional force. It becomes more real, not less.”
- Nguyen Phan Que Mai, The Mountains Sing: A Novel (Algonquin, 2020): “This absorbing, stirring novel . . . (suggests) what history might look like when written from people’s memories rather than enshrined in textbooks that silence or distort the truth.”
- Hervé Guibert, To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life: A Novel (Scribner, 1991), by “A French Writer Who Blurred the Line Between Candor and Provocation” writing about his impending death from AIDS.
- Judith McCormack, The Singing Forest: A Novel (Biblioasis, 2021), “blends thought-provoking reflections on the moral reckoning of war crimes with a warm, wry, almost Anne Tyler-esque depiction of a young woman’s attempts to decode her eccentric professional and personal families.”
- S.E. Boyd, The Lemon: A Novel (Viking, 2022), calls out dishonesty through satire. “. . . this poised and playful debut novel is a sly satire on foodie culture and the modern hype machine.”
- Neel Mukherjee, Choice: A Novel (W.W. Norton & Company, 2024) “is a novel full of characters deciding how much truth to tell.”
- Denise Mina, The Good Liar: A Novel (Mulholland Books, 2025): “The distinguished forensic scientist Claudia O’Sheil is at an important conference in London, scheduled to deliver a speech about an infamous double murder she helped solve. But as (the story) begins, she’s preparing to go rogue. She was ‘going to tell the truth tonight,’ Mina writes. ‘It would ruin her life but she had to do it.’”
From the dark side:
- Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood: A Novel (1949): “Describing the ugly reality of a young man, Hazel Motes, who is deeply tainted by the moral preaching of a church he tries to shake off, it offers a panorama of confused, scared, aggressive people. They all try to make their own ideas more valid by forcing them upon others, using the persuasive, abusive, violent vocabulary of missionary Christianity, as well as its notion that there is only one truth in the world, and they themselves are in possession of it . . .”
- Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot: A Novel (Celadon, 2021): a “washed-up golden boy novelist” steals a book idea from a student, and becomes famous.
- Paul Vidich, The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin: A Novel (Pegasus Crime, 2022): “Anne Simpson Thought She Knew Her Husband. She Didn’t.”
- Anthony Marra, Mercury Pictures Presents: A Novel (Hogaerth, 2022): “It’s summer 1941 and Artie’s studio is in trouble, at odds with the notoriously punctilious administrator of the Motion Picture Association’s Production Code, Joseph Breen, and with the U.S. government, which suspects that Mercury, like the other studios, is making movies to goad the nation toward war.”
- Jenny Jackson, Pineapple Street: A Novel (Pamela Dorman Books, 2023): does money buy honesty?
- Dwyer Murphy, The Stolen Coast: A Novel (Viking, 2023), “deftly conjures a universe of hucksters and operators that’s sodden with atmosphere, crisscrossed with shadows (literal and moral) and loaded with the threat of a double cross any time two people shake hands.”
- Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Long Island Compromise: A Novel (Random House, 2024): “What does it mean to come by one’s life honestly? This is the question at the heart of (this) story of a wealthy, dysfunctional suburban Jewish family.”
Poetry
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Bob Dylan, icon of honesty? In his music and especially his lyrics, yes. “Bob Dylan was a folk singer who was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and was one of the first musicians who took an active role on moral issues. He united people through his music, and he created new poetic expressions within the American song tradition.” He saw what was going on in his time, and he wrote and sang about it: “. . . how many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn’t see?” Sometimes his honesty touched on political issues from a personal perspective, as in: “. . . I just lost all m’ picnic spirit” and “I was lookin’ high and low for them Reds everywhere . . .” His honesty was also intensely personal: “. . . don’t think twice, it’s all right” and “Sometimes I think nobody ever saw me here at all / ’Cept the girl from the Red River shore”. In 2016, he received a Nobel Prize for “redefining boundaries of literature”. Books about Dylan, his life and work, have been authored by Clinton Heylin, Sean Willentz, Timothy Hampton, Harry Shapiro, Richard F. Thomas, Jonathan Cott, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, Howard Sounes, David Yaffe, Sean Latham (ed.), Lee Marshall, and others. His early work, especially, before disappointment overtook him, conveys this, although his later work does too. The later work is more obscure, though.
- “Bob Dylan” album (1962) (37’)
- “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album (1963) (50’)
- “The Times They Are a-Changin’” album (1964) (46’)
- “Bringing It All Back Home” album (1965) (47’)
- “Highway 61 Revisited” album (1965) (52’)
- “Blonde On Blonde” album (1966) (73’)
- “Nashville Skyline” album (1969) (27’)
- “Blood On the Tracks” album (1975) (52’)
- “Desire” album (1976) (56’)
- “Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series, Volume 16, 1980-1985” album (124’)
- “Fragments: Time Out of Mind Sessions, 1996-1997” (Bootleg Series, Volume 17) album (374’)
- “Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006” (Bootleg Series, Volume 8) album (198’)
- “Rough and Rowdy Ways” album (2020) (71’)
- Hollywood Sportatorium concert, 1974, with The Band (123’)
- January 15, 1974, in Landover, Md. (106’)
- “American Poet”: a discussion of Dylan’s lyrical poetry (81’)
Another example of musical honesty in popular music from Dylan’s era is Joni Mitchell. “Her life is a near-untraceable journey of nonconformity and rebellion, punctuated with the creation of some of the world’s rawest music and artwork made consistently throughout her life, not for a pastime, but out of true necessity.” She has sought “honesty and insight into the human condition, to harness it and turn it into deeper knowledge in the hopes of enriching both her and her listener’s lives.” She has released a large body of record albums, and is the main subject of books by David Yaffe, Mark Bego, Lloyd Whitesell, Anne Karppinen, Ruth Charnock (ed.), and Michelle Mercer; and a book of conversations with Malka Marom.
Similarly, Texas Alexander sang excellent, unadorned early blues. “Most Blues singers play guitar, harp, piano or some other instrument, but Texas Alexander’s powerful tenor voice was the only thing he needed to knock you sideways with his primitive Blues.” “Alexander's songs reflected his prison and work experiences.” “He sang in the free rhythm of work songs . . .”
Garrick Ohlsson is a classical pianist who plays with an unadorned, straightforward style. Of his 2022 recordings of Beethoven’s five piano concerti, a reviewer observed: “Of all the pianists before the public today, Ohlsson’s technique is among the most honest. Every note is present and accounted for, nothing ever fudged, all within an exquisitely calculated proportionality.” The distinctly American sound of The Grand Teton Festival Orchestra on the Beethoven recording enhances the impression, rendering the performances compelling for their sheer honesty, in contrast with other performances that most people might find more moving. Reviewers have used the word “honest(y)” to characterize Ohlsson’s playing of Chopin, Brahms, and Brahms again. One critic noted: “All my piano heroes share a common tradition — that showmanship can hinder the honest interpretation of a composer's intent. That dedication to pure music-making is what most characterizes Ohlsson.” Ohlsson has said: “What every would-be artist needs is honesty, even if the prognosis is unpleasant. . . You need the real insight of honesty . . .” Here is a link to Ohlsson’s playlists.
Compositions:
- Edwin York Bowen, Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 11 (1903) (approx. 26’)
Albums:
- Buddy Guy, “The Blues Don’t Lie” (2022) (64’): “'Blues Don’t Lie' is a descriptive narrative of the meaning of the blues.”
- Martyn Joseph, “This Is What I Want to Say” (2024) (44’) “is full of optimistic, altruistic, and encouraging messages put to sad, thoughtful, and intricately played acoustic music. There are love songs to his wife and family, including what sounds like a wedding blessing (‘It’s A Fine Thing’), but others are bits of wisdom for everyone listening.”
From the dark side: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), K. 492 (1786) (approx. 165-203’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances), is a story about deception. Here are productions with video conducted by Pritchard in 1973, Böhm in 1976, Korsten in 2006, and Gardiner. A top DVD recording features Finley, Hagley, Fleming & Schmidt (Haitink) in 1994. Top audio-recorded performances are by:
- Panerai, Streich, Rehfuss, Stich-Randall, Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (Paris) & Chorale Elisabeth Brasseur (Rosbaud) in 1955;
- Taddei, Moffo, Wächter, Schwarzkopf & Philharmonia Chorus & Orchestra (Giulini) in 1959;
- Blankenburg, Freni, Bacquir, Gencer, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, & Glyndebourne Festival Chorus (Varviso) in 1962;
- Berry, Rothenberger, Prey, Güden, Dresdener Staatskapelle, & Chor des Staatsoper Dresden (Suitner) in 1964;
- Prey, Mathis, Janowitz, Fischer-Dieskau, Deutsche Oper Berlin Orchestra & Chorus (Böhm) in 1967;
- Ganzarolli, Freni, Wixell, Norman, BBC Symphony Chorus & Orchestra (Colin Davis) in 1970;
- van Dam, Freni, Krause, Harwood, Wiener Philharmoniker & Wiener Staatsoper (Karajan) in 1974;
- Ramey, Popp, Allen, Te Kanawa, London Philharmonic Orchestra & London Opera Chorus (Solti) in 1981;
- van Dam, Hendricks, Raimondi, Popp, Academy of Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields & Ambrosian Opera Chorus (Marriner) in 1985;
- Salomaa, Bonney, Hagegård, Augér, Drottningholm Court Theatre Chorus & Orchestra (Östman) in 1987; and
- Pisaroni, Karg, Hampson, Yoncheva, Brower & Chamber Orchestra of Europe (Nézet-Séguin) in 2016.
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Billy Joel, “Honesty” (lyrics)
- Beyonce, “If I Were a Boy” (lyrics)
- P!nk, “Who Knew” (lyrics)
- Halsey, “Without Me” (lyrics)
Visual Arts
- Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with Diogenes (ca. 1647)
- Jusepe de Ribera, Diogenes with His Lantern (1637)
Film and Stage
- Say Anything: Honesty, which is at the heart of a teenage girl’s world view, draws her to a geeky boy who would not otherwise have a chance; she also believes that it informs her relationship with her father.
- The Great Man, about a man who learns the truth about an unscrupulous person, and reveals it
- Almost Famous, exploring the dark side and the bright side of honesty, with a story of a rock band, its female groupies and a fifteen-year-old reporter who has no business being there, except for his talent
From the dark side:
- Anastasia, about an intended deception
- Elmer Gantry, an examination of hypocrisy
- Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn: like most shock-films, this one succeeds by manipulating the audience; here, it’s expertly done
- Wise Blood: John Huston’s film adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s novel is among the most peculiar of high-quality films.
- American Hustle: this fictionalized account of the Abscam scandal explores deception from many angles – how we deceive ourselves and others.
