Reflecting on the mirror test
Who will take the mirror test in 2023?
Stories about the moral dilemma of telling the truth go back to ancient times. This is because lying is an innate human trait, but lying also undermines basic human relationships that are required to build a civilized world. So, with the New Year approaching, what better time to tell a new story about the battle for our moral soul?
After all, be it politics, corporations, media and other major institutions—we seem to have a universal problem with the truth today. Like rich parents bribing colleges to accept their kids, and the colleges who accepted them; like professional athletes and their teams cheating; like Pharma conspiring to addict America with pain meds; or those in the media that serve-up half-truths to inflame audiences. Is it any wonder that we’ve lost trust in so many institutions?
After all, we are in the “Post-Truth Era” (as outlined in my documentary) so we need more (true) stories that reestablish truth as a moral imperative to sustain our democracy. From great philosophers to ordinary people with basic life experiences, we all know that sometimes not telling the truth can be inconsequential and benign.
But there are those times when telling the truth—or not—has deep moral consequences in our everyday lives. Fortunately many of us do not face those rare occasions where truth determines life or death or can change the course of history. To paraphrase Thomas Paine, those are the moments that try one’s soul.
This is a story about someone facing a moral choice between telling the truth or “not recalling” the truth, out of both a sense of loyalty and fear of reprisal. It is a situation many people find themselves in, one way or another, and raises the question: “What would you have done”?
Of course, this is the Cassidy Hutchinson story. She was the key witness for the January 6th House Committee against Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn 2020 Presidential election. Initially Hutchinson’s lawyer’s, who was paid by Trump allies, legal advice boiled down to “If you don’t 100 percent recall something, saying ‘I don’t recall’ is an entirely fine answer. The committee doesn’t know what you can and can not recall. The less you remember, the better. You’re not lying if you don’t recall.”
For anyone that has watched televised investigative hearings, we’ve heard endless variations of the “I can’t recall” answer. It’s no surprise that this is how lawyers instruct their clients to lie—to not tell the whole truth. But is was refreshing for Hutchinson to confirm what we all knew was the truth about this noxious legal behavior.
Many people face a similar “real world” situation as Hutchison faced, of trying to balance loyalty to your professional career with a moral code to not break the law (she recalled plenty that she did not tell the committee).
“Throughout my first [Jan. 6th Committee] interview…I felt this moral struggle…in my heart. I knew where my loyalty lies and my loyalties lied with the truth. I never wanted to diverge from that. I never wanted…(to) be the witness that I became,” Hutchinson told the Jan. 6th Committee last September, six months after her first interview.
Hutchinson sought advice from a GOP member of Congress she knew from working on Capital Hill. The advice was straightforward: “You’re the one that has to live with the mirror test the rest of your life,” she recalled.
“I had become someone that I never thought that I would become,” Hutchinson told the committee. While there are plenty of more details of corruption and intrigue in her testimony, we know how the story ends.
Cassidy Hutchinson took the mirror test and told the truth. Hopefully 2023 will be a year when many who make up the body politic start taking the mirror test.