Pre-approved my eye: Legalized Lying
an essay by Michael Neal Morris
They give guarantees like, “No one is turned away, no matter what their credit rating” or “You can live the life you deserve.” A sense of weariness comes over me that slowly turns into a churning anger when I see that again someone has littered my mailbox with another letter that says I’ve been pre-approved for a car loan or some exorbitant line of credit. These people, I know, don’t often follow through, and when they do, it is at a price that is textbook usury. But what can be done is a world where people act upon the notion that if something is legal, then it is also morally right.
Sometimes I get these letters and react with confusion that someone would take the time and energy to address me directly when I’m sure anyone with a dollar can see I have terrible credit and can barely make ends meet as it is. Once, in a desperately stupid moment, I read a letter carefully, pouring over every word that said I was guaranteed at least five thousand dollars. I began to think, “Well, I have kept a solid job for five years. I’ve tried to catch up on bills and where I have could not, I’ve contacted those I owe money to and worked out some arrangements. Maybe I do have some chance at this.” So I filled out the little form and hoped.
A few weeks later I received another letter: a one page form that essentially said that my credit rating was such that they could not give me the pre-approved credit card.
I wanted to write them a long, angry missive charging them with hypocrisy and deception. I wanted to threaten legal action. I wanted to say things that are best left out of letters, even those of protest. Eventually I threw the letter in the garbage and kept my curses to myself.
Once showed my disapproval of this practice by placing writing “Lying Is Wrong” on their original note and placing it in their reply envelope. I did not put a stamp on the envelope, feeling that they should bear the cost, even in a small way, for my complaint. But I wonder if the effect of this was the same as replying to spam: opinions are ignored, and the senders know they have someone who actually opens the junk mail. I only got more.
Now we have the aforementioned SPAM to contend with. Most of us have been inundated with promises of instant money, better sex, and even devices to stop spam. Here is another example of something that appears to be a mere annoyance, but which is really a legalized form of lying. This practice costs the perpetrator little or nothing while costing businesses millions of dollars. The postal service is regulated by laws, but email is not. One can write the sender of junk mail and force them to stop sending it to us. (It usually takes awhile and a great deal of persistence, but it can be done.) However, getting off one mailing list for spam usually puts one on several others. More importantly, because junk email seems to be just an annoyance, a matter of stuff we are now used to deleting each day, we do not recognize and revolt against the general principle that seems to govern so much of American culture: “Lying is okay as long as there are people to listen and no one gets in trouble.”
This inclination should not come as a surprise. The Supreme Court has ruled that police officers, when conducting a criminal investigation, can lie to suspects and witnesses. If that same suspect or witness makes a false statement, then she or he can be charged with a criminal offense, a fact many investigators use to encourage people to tell the truth (or the version of the truth they want to hear). Most of our legal dramas on television include some sort of deception sequence which might indicate that viewer by and large approve of the practice. On television, the bad guy is usually caught by time we view the closing credits, and so it appears that the end justifies the means.
And
we should not be surprised at how arbitrarily such issues are applied. When
Some, I’m sure are wondering how I can connect junk mail and dishonesty by people in authority. They both say something disturbing about our society. In a world where people need and desperately search for something to hope for, particularly concerning the other humans we must move through life with, we have do not just have a handful of individuals who make untrue statements. We have a society that turns its blind eye upon the lies themselves and say they do no harm.
© Michael Neal Morris
For more of my writing, please visit Monk Notes.