Saw a local pol on television last night and heard him say he acted in "good faith."

I knew it was a lie, as I 'm sure others did as well.

But there may be many who don't really understand what "good faith" is, and therefore can't detect the lie. People who hear familiar words like "good faith," and assume they know what they mean, but they've never really thought about it because, well, who has the time?

"Good faith" is like "honor." Mostly meaningless words that adorn empty phrases intended to convey something that's supposedly important; but utterly irrelevant to the day to day experience of their lives.

There's another group that knows he lied, but they're sophisticated. It wasn't really a lie, because he wasn't deceiving anyone. Not them, anyway. They know what "good faith" means, they know that politicians seldom exhibit it. Faithlessness is simply regarded as the cost of doing business.

It doesn't really matter.

Except, it really does.

And I don't think anything will change unless we begin to understand that.

Originally posted at Notes From the Underground 06:39 Wednesday, 24 May 2023