When Congressman Jamaal Bowman was caught on camera pulling the fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building last Saturday in an attempt to delay a vote on a government funding bill, he did what most politicians do — he lied, saying he mistook the alarm lever for a door handle while rushing to an important vote. 

The lie (or, in political parlance, spin) was absurd, and everyone who saw the footage knew it. Yet the congressman told it anyway, undisturbed by how provably untrue it was. Several of his Democratic colleagues, equally undisturbed by old-fashioned notions like integrity or shame, leapt to his weak defense.

Lying isn’t new, but the practice of continuing to lie even after being caught seems new, at least at the scale we are witnessing. Everyone from Anthony Fauci to Mark Zuckerberg to the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, is doing it. “Getting caught” no longer seems to be a disincentive to continuing to lie. It hardly seems to interrupt most people’s days.

Once upon a time, when Americans still had a shared social contract and shame was a healthy behavioral inhibitor, the results of the DNA test on the infamous blue dress meant it was time to come clean. Those days are over. Admission of guilt is obsolete. The press, corporate interests, and political polarization now conspire to make defiant lying consequence-free. We are witnessing the potent new strain of an old virus, and there is no Pfizer vaccine being developed to stop it.

The lying is not just happening with shameless disregard for the public trust, but with contempt for the people who still demand that our leaders feel a sense of responsibility for that trust. We live in a world full of cameras and computers, and liars know their lies are more susceptible to discovery. The only thing they can do is dismiss and deride the people who catch them and enjoy the pained looks on their faces when they realize that exposing a lie doesn’t end it.

The delight our health officials, attorneys general, intelligence experts, and elected officials seem to take in our shock and confusion when they lie is particularly sinister and worrying. They know we know who they are, and what they have done. They also know that it doesn’t matter — they will pay no price for any of it. Secretary Clinton gave an interview less than two weeks ago warning Americans about “Russian interference” in our elections. The Russian dossier-purchasing prevaricator said it not just with a straight face, but with a smirk.

The defiant liars aren’t just crazy; they are crazy-making. That is their strategy for success. If they can drive the public mad with their gargantuan gaslighting and their enjoyment of it, they can clear the field for the sea of future lies they plan to tell unobstructed. Staying sane is the best defense.

Those who insist that they saw the burning cars and violent rioters behind the CNN news anchor describing a “mostly peaceful” protest on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020 are the answer. The ones who knew that Hunter Biden’s laptop and inflation were real, and that Jussie Smollett’s story was fake, are the defiant truth-tellers, and the metaphorical Ivermectin of this pandemic of lies. News of their potency is being suppressed, but it will eventually win the day.