When will we stop lying to ourselves and each other?

This week from President-Elect Trump: 
          “The dishonest media likes saying that I am in agreement
           with Julian Assange (concerning Russian hacks) — wrong. 
           I simply state what he states, it is for the people
           to make up their own minds as to the truth.
           The media lies to make it look like I am against
           ‘Intelligence’ when in fact I am a big fan!”   (The NYT/1-6-2017)

Trump discussing truth troubles me.  And I am left wondering:   What happens when liars speak of truth?   Is it like a flamingo describing life below zero?  Is it like a stone telling what it is like to float?  

We live in a society that is truth-blind, the way men are color-blind.  We live in a time where people’s sensibilities around the concept of truth have grossly deteriorated, show no sign of improving, and we have elected as president, a man who has no right to hold the five letter word in his mouth.    

What is “truth”?   In Roman mythology she was a goddess named Veritas.  In the Bible, Its name is Jesus. To Plato, there was nothing so delightful than truth to the ear or on the tongue.  But that was another time—another reality.

I think of the famed Twilight Zone episode, Time Enough at Last, when I imagine what it will be like when we, finally, stop lying to each other.  I see men and women walking around inside a sepia landscape, seeking salvation in the rubble of a ruined world, drained of color…drained of truth.   

For me, truth, ought to be an inalienable right, as being created equal or possessing the right to be happy or free is.  But then again, truthfully, without an ability to identify, recognize or value truth, these inalienable rights:  equality, happiness and freedom, ultimately, will cease to exist anyway; the way we would cease to exist if God stopped thinking us into being. 
 
A life without truth is disturbing and makes one feel unsafe, un-tethered and under-valued.  Just ask a child of an alcoholic.   Listen to the personal testimony in “The Rooms” where people hold onto The Big Book the way a man drowning grasps a life jacket.   The most significant damage caused by living in an alcoholic home, is that the measure of what is true-- develops out of whack.  And life without being able to gage what is true is a life of doubt, anxiety and instability.

Is that what we want the norm to be?