Every nation needs its foundation myths. They are a way of communicating core values to succeeding generations.
The story of George Washington and his father’s cherry tree is revered in the United States. As the story goes, the six-year-old future president was given a hatchet as a present by his father.
Young George promptly took the axe to his father’s favourite cherry tree. When asked what had happened, George said: “I cannot tell a lie, I did cut it with my hatchet.” Rather than beat the boy, his father hugged him and told him that telling the truth was worth more than a mighty forest.
As the world prepares for the inauguration of Donald Trump as 45th president, we would do well to ponder the importance we place on truth in the modern age.
Trump plays fast and loose with it.
Some believe the grandstanding showman will present a new face to the world when he swears the oath of office next week.
Leopards don’t change their spots. As president-elect, Trump has behaved no differently to the obnoxious foul-mouthed carpet-bagger he was on the campaign. He will be the same in the Oval Office.
This will be a government driven by whim. Yes most politicians are self-seeking. But few take it to the level of Mr Trump.
Sigmund Freud, the celebrated psychoanalyst, believed our minds were controlled by three forces. The ego, the super ego and the id.
The id is untamed and instinctive, it is the wild child that sees the world only through its own eyes; the super ego is driven by convention and rules, it is the voice of our parents telling us to go to the naughty step. The ego is the bit that tries to find a course between the two extremes.
Mr Trump’s personality transcends ego and super ego.
Anyone who has spent time with a three-year-old child will recognise the signs of arrested development evidenced by the president-elect’s stream of invective on twitter, his abuse of vulnerable individuals who cross him, and his knee-jerk responses to perceived slights.
In his totemic Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln talked about “government of the people, by the people, for the people” and he promised that it “would not perish from the earth”.
This weekend we stand on a precipice. The people have handed the keys of the free world to a man clearly unfit to hold office.
Trump’s term will be one of government by the id, for the id. The rest of us will not get a look-in.
The people who elected him will come to regret their ill-judged vote. But in the meantime, the American political system will need to find a way of minimising his impact, and the world will have to work round him until the voters come to their senses and elect a president fit for office.
As for George Washington and his hatchet… well, the story was made up by his biographer Mason Locke Weems. Weems knew what his public, hungry for information about Washington, wanted to read true or not.
An omen of what was to come, the cherry tree myth (for myth it is) prefigured the post-truth society by a couple of centuries.
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Apparently I once told Martin McGuinness that he looked cute. He had phoned The Irish News to complain that a picture - used to illustrate a story about him - was deliberately chosen to make him look like an idiot.
It is a common complaint of politicians and, truth be told, journalists sometimes take pleasure in using a particularly unflattering photograph.
Telling him he looked cute in the picture was a feeble excuse, and disrespectful. (Disrespect is another journalistic trait.) And I apologise now. Given this was the early nineties, and the job he had then, it was also somewhat fool-hardly on my part. The then editor thought I was both brave and stupid.
Whatever you think of Mr McGuinness’s politics and his past, there can be no question that in office he has served the people of this island – nationalist and unionist – well. He was a distinguished minister for education, and he has performed the role of deputy first minister to the best of his ability in very difficult circumstances.
In refusing to work with him for the common good, the DUP has done its own people and its country an enormous disservice. So much could have been achieved with good will. Ten years on, all the DUP has to show for its tenure is a pile of ash.
