I’ve Been Polled

Wow, the Marist College Poll phoned me last night, soliciting my opinion on a myriad of issues.

I got kind of wound up, though, because a lot of the questions weren’t what I’d call honest questions. They contained presuppositions which I just wasn’t buying–and I had to tell them so.

For instance: “Do you consider yourself white, black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, etc.?” If I considered myself black, would that make me  black?

And then there were a bunch of questions that had to do with “a person in the process of transitioning from one sex to another.” Hold it! I don’t recognize that as a valid category. No matter what they do to you surgically, no matter how stereotypically you try to mimic the other sex, no matter what hormones they shoot you up with–if you’re a man, every single cell in your body will continue to be male, with male chromosomes. But they kept asking, and I had to keep answering, “That is not a valid category, those people are not in fact having their sex changed, it is an imbecility forced on our society by very wicked persons.”

Some of the questions in this poll reflected a deep dishonesty that has crept into our very language, making it extremely difficult to speak the truth, and maybe even impossible, at times.

How dishonest? Let us not forget that some of these pollsters had Hillary Clinton winning big, big, big, right up into Election Night. They lied to themselves, and believed it.

I know a few individuals who lie to themselves. You probably do, too. How does that work out for them?

When Solon the philosopher saw the first play ever put on in Athens, he didn’t like it. When they asked him why not, he said, “All that lying–and in public, too! Now it’s on a stage, but sooner or later it’ll get into our business.”

Lying can be habit-forming. Ask any politician.