HOW TO LIE LIKE NEIL ERIKSON
You know Neil Erikson is lying when his lips start moving. Neil tells lies like birds sing or a rose blows from nature. Bullshit comes so naturally to Erikson that the next time he says ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ God is seriously considering taking him at his oath.
Erikson is not a skilled liar, nor does he lend an artistic flair to his fibs. Rather, his tall stories are fuelled by compulsion. For Erikson, the truth is entirely subjective and falsehoods afford him a more agreeable relationship with reality. They allow him to model his world according to whim. And there is no arena in which Neil will ever feel obliged to tell the truth—not the sanctity of a confessional box, or the authority of a law court. It’s all the same to him.
But more to the point, enough of his interactions happen with others whom themselves have a sketchy relationship with honesty, that their cognitive dissonance coupled with moral imbecility allows his bogus utterances to pass without the least scrutiny.
If Erikson tells you the sun will rise in the morning, you’d do well to get a second opinion.
Wouldn’t you love to be able to lie like Neil Erikson? Would it not be a relief not to have to shoulder the burden of guilt when spinning a whopper to your boss or spouse? Can you imagine the buzz you’d get from knowing that whatever pork pies you’re likely to swear are the whole truth and nothing but the truth won’t cause you so much as a ripple of conscience?
Just how does he do it? Erikson’s lies have been remarked upon by no lesser personage than Federal Court Judge Suzanne Jones who described him as having “…a tenuous relationship with the truth.”
This misses the point, however, since Erikson has no relationship with the truth whatsoever. He doesn’t even have a rapport; not so much as a détente. More to the point, Erikson wouldn’t recognise the truth if it pulled on a kilt and started Morris Dancing in front of him.
Neil is diametrically opposite to every positive in nature that his breath makes flowers shrivel and heaven has run out of winged guardians what with the trail of dead angels lying in his shadow like the body count of a nuclear conflict. If he successfully sued for defamation, the maximum a judge could award Erikson for damage to his reputation is about 35 cents.
Erikson can neither drive in a straight line nor lie straight in bed. The first words he ever spoke were when he told his mother, “I didn’t do it,” after soiling his nappy. He was 12 at the time.
But not just anyone can lie like Neil Erikson. You need to have enough enablers around that immediately take everything you say and lose it down the memory hole to fully give wings to your fairy tales. Neil has that in spades. He has faked news, trumped up stories, tossed out red herrings, disregarded the facts, dealt in terminological inexactitudes, swung cock and bull, and pedalled deceit so shamelessly to everyone around him and yet his “comrades” still regard him as a top bloke. Not only are they uncritical of his voluminous slanders, calumnies, and defamations but they aid and abet in spreading them after the fact. Did we just say fact? That was inserted as an ironic device.
If you want to lie like Neil Erikson and beat him for the crown of Horse Hockey King, not only must you have a pathological condition in which you could look St Peter in the eye and deny all your earthly sins—and blame them on somebody else—but it helps to have the Australian Federal Police and ASIO backing you up.
Nobody gets to the top on their own, and Erikson didn’t become the Elvis of Bullshit on his own steam. He had powerful people in the shadows who could step in and mop up when the horse shit got too slippery underfoot. They fudged and doctored, cut and pasted, edited and spliced on his behalf. Just like Joe Biden and his son Hunter rely on to make it through a typical day, evening, or just ten minutes of their earthly existence, there are “good people” to help him deny you heard what you heard.
Nool might make it look easy, but remember that he is operating on an average of four brain cells so that part of the regular grey matter in which the conscience operates is shut off to him. If you want to be as good a crap artist as him then you too must reduce your IQ by about 80 points. That may entail bashing your skull against the corner of a brick wall or holding your breath for an hour and a half.
Remember, it’s not a lie if YOU believe it. ■
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