How do you mislead someone without telling a lie? This is the question asked by defendants, witnesses, prosecutors, defense attorneys, cheating spouses, captives being interrogated, every card-carrying member of any secretive governmental agency and, of course, politicians of every fragrance. The object of the game is to avoid committing perjury while misdirecting someone from the truth; it is always done maliciously, and some persons are much more artful at it than others.
Once, while in my 20s, I had a particularly late night out with some of my banking colleagues (banks accepted deposits and loaned money to individuals and business in those halcyon days!), most of whom where environmentally conscious before it had become fashionable; accordingly, they fueled themselves with high-grade ethanol and propelled us all into a night which we would never forget - if only we could remember it.
I woke up in the remains of a stupor the next morning, and arrived at work bleary-eyed and an hour or so late. My boss, asked me why. I told him, without making full eye contact that, "I had some car trouble this morning, Bob." I was not sharp enough for spontaneous deviousness. It was simply the first thing that popped into my head after realizing, for the very first time, just how bright the lights in the conference room were.
He paused a moment, giving me a chance to retract my story. I was too slow and too intimidated to take advantage of what might have been clemency if not outright amnesty. He asked, "What kind of car trouble?" I responded by saying, "Well, Bob, I had trouble getting into my car." While this was not a lie, it was a quite a stretch. I was neither courageous nor clever enough to be more creative, and I didn't know much about the mechanical aspects of the car, so I told a convoluted truth to make my lie seem like more of a witty comment. Bob was not impressed.
It is what is not said, as much as what is said that draws the victim of a non-lying misleader into the catacombs of presumption. That's the trick. I had learned it too late.
Today I spoke with a business acquaintance of mine, who told me that he was no longer "interested" in "taking on" any "public sector" clients, and that he would be limiting the scope of his consultancy to private sector organizations on a selective basis. I was impressed. I presumed quite a bit.
I found out later, through a mutual acquaintance, that this fellow had never had a governmental (public sector) consulting contract, and further, that he had actually held a low pay grade municipal government job (from which he had been fired) for a number of years, and had been "moonlighting" with some private clients to supplement his income. I had never known that he actually had been employed by the County Clerk's office in a different county. I could never reach him by telephone, and always had to leave messages on his voicemail.
He had mislead me by his keen command of Manipulative Presumption. He didn't lie to me. He just told me enough information for me to draw my own line to connect the dots.
Douglas E Castle
http://TheGlobalFuturist.blogspot.com
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An Important Educational Video:
Instructions: Click on the link beneath the picture.
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| "Just the facts, Ma'am." - Click Link Below: |
THE CLAPPER CAPER
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