Isabelle's view: Shameless lies

Among all the forms of lying that populate our daily lives - lies of omission, pious lies, self-interested lies, pathological lies - one singular category seems to hold the rope in these turbulent times: the shameless lie.

We’ve all told this lie as children, when we were caught red-handed eating chocolate or candy when we weren’t supposed to. «No, Mom, I didn’t steal anything from the kitchen cabinet—I just found this in my pocket.» And to back up those claims, we’d add, «Besides, I didn’t even know there was chocolate in the cabinet.» Of course, moms are sharp, and they aren’t fooled by these little deviations from the truth (which they themselves practiced at that age). But the most surprising part lies elsewhere: the children themselves «know» that their mom «knows.» And that’s the whole subtlety of the brazen lie. The liar isn’t unaware of p