An interesting feature of a monarchical society is the fact that authority need not be shrouded in tenebrous bureaucratic titles. The guy in charge can be the guy in charge, and there's no need to hide the fact that he's in charge. In liberal democracy, the rhetorical memetics most often deployed to influence voters and the populace always seem to paint power as dangerous, and the desire for it as wicked. Therefore, anyone that is seeking power must do so out of a necessity that has been forced upon them by circumstances or events. While this may be the case very occasionally, most of the time the type of person who needs to be constantly and universally praised and accepted is exactly the type of person who wants to be an elected politician. In this way, the process itself selects for that type of person and, more importantly, the archetypal traits that you will find in those seeking office. Thus, you always get liars. Sometimes, the lies are little things. Most times, the lies aren't that big. Occasionally, it's one big lie.
But, as the old saying goes, if one lie, all lies. There is an inherent element of corruption to taking power based on a lie. Regardless of intentions or context, the initial lie serves as a lubricant for the bigger falsities that inevitably follow out of a necessity to “keep things going.” It is relatively easy to find contexts that will justify lying. This is why there is a concerted effort by Certain Folks to propagate the idea that slippery slopes are a rhetorical fallacy, even though it's as plain as day to see that they exist. One of the treasured aspects of a liberal democracy is the potential for a diverse array of minority interests1. As well, a diversity of minority interests means that you will always be able to find victims, opposition, or supporters of any conceivable idea or policy. It doesn't matter if it's an act of war being declared on Elbonia or a new rule about acceptable dog meat percentage in hamburgers, there will always be some hysterical person ready to explain how it is going to ruin everything, or usher in utopia. We know from the second half of the 20th century that nothing motivates a politician more than a hysterical person with an audience, particularly if they are anywhere near a camera. And so, to save the children, or correct the record, or to get on the right side of history, the politician will lie.
This deceptive quality is ubiquitous in liberal democracies, and not just in the miniscule elected representative portion. The key members of a bureaucracy, the highly paid and basically useless people who sit around all day talking about how underappreciated and underpaid they are, constantly lie to themselves and everyone else about what it is they do and why they do it. The managers that oversee these people must lie to them as well as their superiors about why nothing gets done, why that's a good thing, and why it needs to happen more. The bright and pretty people populating the various NGOs make a career out of truth twisting and data stretching to help or hinder elements within the bureaucracy, depending on whichever small god keeps their wallet full. The journalists and talking heads must lie constantly about all of this, spinning a deceitful web that gives this whole structure far more tensile strength than Nature’s God intended. This kind of full stack deception is a characteristic that unites all liberal democracies across time and space. Because the Mandate of Heaven has been exchanged for the Mandate of the People, and because the people are literally incapable of unanimity in anything, bureaucrats, politicians, and every other agent of governance must use deceit to draw attention to the things they wish to highlight constantly, just as they must suppress those that are not serving their interests at that moment.
It does not take a rocket surgeon to see that this is endemic in liberal democracy, nor is it that hard to understand why it's so widespread. Further still, if one were raised in a seemingly coherent liberal democracy, it's pretty easy to dismiss a culture of little deceits as an unremarkable side effect of a generally useful, worthwhile, and just system. When it becomes the M.O. of government to say the opposite of what they mean in every instance of policy and process, citizens are first invited, then compelled, to give their complicity to blatant non-truths. Once you sell your soul to the devil, he doesn't leave you alone; he comes back for every part of you, one piece at a time. Agents of governance will keep returning to the doorstep of the people, first begging for their complicity, then asking for it, and finally demanding it. It never stops because it's a train with no brakes. The more cars you add just gives it more inertia regardless of where it's going. Disastrous social experiments deceitfully camouflaged as compassionate initiatives litter the landscape of every liberal democracy. Every single one required people lying, to themselves and others, about what they were doing, why they were doing it, and what was most likely going to happen. Again, little lies have a tendency to build up because they require more and bigger lies to keep going.
In a monarchy, if the King has to lie to get what he wants, he is weak, growing weaker, or moments away from being deposed. If a monarch wants to levy a tax so that he can expand the space program and use a laser to carve his initials into the moon, all he's got to do is say exactly that, figure out who thinks this is a good idea, and give them land and favors and status. This is not corruption, it is how people work. You figure out what they want or need, and give it to them, so long as it furthers your aims and ambitions. Pretending to be selfless does not do anything good for anyone in the long term, because no amount of emotion dumped over the surface of a self-seeking rhetorical structure will change what it actually is. The very same applies to initiatives and policies that are painful but necessary. The King oftentimes is required to spend the youth and wealth of his people to defeat external enemies. It is incumbent upon the monarchy to justify sacrifice of value to retain the will of the people and the support of the nobility. The King can try to lie, but it is immensely difficult to successfully deceive multiple groups that differ in constituency, desire, and literal geography. A lie that works on Barons will not be well suited to Peasants. At some point, the subjects of the realm will become exposed to a lie that wasn’t tailored to them, and it will not work.2
The phrase “truth in all things” is a platitude almost everybody can agree with, but no one really wants to follow, particularly those raised in a liberal democracy. From before we can walk and talk, we are covered in deceits. Some of them are little things, like lies about rotund North Poleans with flying caribou. Others are bigger, like programming children to blindly believe in equality while forcing them to observe and participate in competitive tasks that implement and reinforce skill based hierarchies. We are absolutely bathed in deceit, just as our parents were before us, and their parents before them. Each successive generation gets inundated with lies, grows up hating it when they figure it out, then has children and starts scrambling around for a bucket.
Responsibility for one's choices and actions is a fundamental component of any healthy family or society, so grandiose excuses like "government made me do it" don't usually hold much water. But in this isolated instance regarding endemic deception in liberal democratic systems, it is 100% the fault of the agents of governance. They demand that we live doused in deceit and perpetuate it continuously, and we are forced to go along to get along. So thoroughly saturated is our culture that you have armed and masculine conservative males whose profession is to protect politicians whose prime directive is to take away guns, suppress masculinity, and eradicate traditions. On both sides of this toxic relationship, and every other one that comprises the governance tapestry, each participant wakes up in the morning and lies to the first person they encounter3, which sets the tone for the rest of the day, and their lives.
We don't have to live like this. We don't have to lie to our children to buy them nice things in December. We don't have to lie to people to do things that need to be done. And, for those with the aptitude and charisma and drive, we don't have to lie about wanting to take power and rule. We must take power completely and rule fairly. Monarchy gives us the opportunity to make honesty, not deceit, the lubricant of societies machinery.
Power players in modern liberal democracy prefer foreign born, or externally identified, minority populations precisely because of the culture of rampant deception. Minority phenotype is endlessly interesting to see and watch and discuss, but minority math means they're very easy to hide and, more importantly, reference in absentia. To put it another way, the politician can always say, "Just because you don't see/know/care about this or that minority like I do..." This kind of deceptive manipulation sates the deep desire to be the holiest person present, as well it effectively browbeats opposition into silence for fear of being painted as xenophobic, or racist, or backwards or uncultured. This specific tactic, lying about their policy aims to benefit the minority du jour, has become a necessity to achieve anything in current year.
This is a big reason for why Moderns minimize and obfuscate the realities of monarchies in both histories and fictions. Liberal democracy homogenizes sources of information and learning, just as they attempt to roll everyone into a false rhetorical construct referred to as “the People.” The diversity ubiquitous in a culturally coherent monarchy is an amazing and powerful thing, and it terrifies the Modern…
This is in reference to the Mirror. I feel like that’s obvious, but the Magical Editing 8 Ball did not agree…