“Father, I cannot tell a lie. I cut the tree,” George confessed. Adding insult to injury, the six-year-old admitted to using the gift hatchet given him for his birthday by his dad to do the deed.

This famed fable on the importance of truth-telling first appeared in the fifth edition of Parson Weems’ biography of our first president, the nation’s revered father. Weems left no explanation for adding the story of George Washington and the cherry tree to the initial edition of the biography he first published in 1800. Perhaps he wished to establish that the seeds of Washington’s greatness were evident from his earliest life. Or maybe he was just trying to sell more books in a growing textbook market. Or perhaps both.

Cherry trees — well, they do not grow on trees. Augustine Washington was not happy with the loss of this one. But he saw the opportunity in the moment for delivering a life lesson. “He was overjoyed,” Weeds wrote, with “George’s expression of virtuous honesty.” Truth prevailed, all was forgiven, a legend was entrenched.

Weems did not identify the sources for this story. Ironically, it is almost surely a fabrication. That is, a lie. Yet generations of American children were required to read it in school, and learn the lesson that honesty was the best policy.

Most contemporary Americans still say they believe in the importance of telling the truth, but also say that it's harder to know it when they see it. Studies that rely on people reporting their own behavior show that lying is pervasive in every walk of life: within families; in romantic relationships; at school; and in the workplace. Overall, each person is estimated to tell between one and two lies a day. Sixty percent of us are likely to tell at least one lie in a 10-minute-long meeting.

With lying so pervasive, trust in our institutions and the professionals that work in them has been in persistent decline. Gallup has found that politicians — especially those in the national government in Washington — are widely regarded as among the least truthful of us, “willing to say anything to get elected.”

A whole new profession, fact checker, has emerged to keep track of the relative truthfulness of people in public life. Meanwhile those being checked are watching those who are watching them, especially those in the media, looking for intentional bias.

Donald Trump has been at the head of the parade. He has been an unapologetic, unabashed purveyor of baseless lies in his three national campaigns and his four years as president. The Washington Post counted 30,573 “false or misleading claims” made by Trump when president. Just this year National Public Radio counted 162 “misstatements, exaggerations and downright lies” during a single Trump press conference.

But why should we care, if everyone is lying? If lying has become the societal norm and everyone knows it?

The answer is: because all lies are not created equal. When we lie, most of us tell small lies, “white lies.” We are trying to avoid socially awkward moments and resultant bad feelings. The reach of these lies is usually limited. They are rarely intended to insult or hurt. We call in sick when we’re perfectly well to go to the ballgame with pals, or to take a “Mental Health Day” after a stressful time in the family or at work. We shouldn’t but we do. And in doing so, the lies we tell do not alter or threaten to fundamentally alter the character of our political system.

Donald Trump tells big lies, following the dictum of Adolph Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” For example, Trump persistently has asserted that he did not lose the 2020 presidential election. Most incredibly, he claimed, without a scintilla of evidence, that the administration of elections in a number of the states he did not carry was corrupt while he simultaneously sought to influence vote counts. He asserted without evidence that the polls were flooded with non-citizens (actually barred from voting in national elections by federal law.) Many of these, he baselessly added, were illegal immigrants. These assertions then provided the rationale for resisting acceptance of the presidential election outcome and encouraging insurrection, leaving Trump — the incumbent — in office, situated to use the office’s powers to block the orderly transfer of power.

Once power is captured, retaining it becomes the primary goal of those now in power. Resources are gathered, people are placed in key positions, laws are passed, all to alter heretofore proud democratic institutions and processes — until our democracy is irreversibly diminished, and then lost.

And that’s no lie.

The author is a former professor and dean at SUNY New Paltz and chaired the county's Charter Revision Commission, among many other accomplishments. To read more about him, click here.