The lie is the architecture of false assumptions maintaining the value gap.

Evidence

Baldwin’s understanding of the American condition cohered around a set of practices that, taken together, constitute something I will refer to throughout this book as the lie. The idea of facing the lie was always at the heart of Jimmy’s witness, because he thought that it, as opposed to our claim to the shining city on a hill, was what made America truly exceptional. The lie is more properly several sets of lies with a single purpose. If what I have called the “value gap” is the idea that in America white lives have always mattered more than the lives of others, then the lie is a broad and powerful architecture of false assumptions by which the value gap is maintained. These are the narrative assumptions that support the everyday order of American life, which means we breathe them like air. We count them as truths. We absorb them into our character. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 82

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the core definition of ‘the lie’ — one of the two key concepts of the book.
• XREF: Directly parallel to my project of defining ‘the after times’ — this is the conceptual sibling concept. — connects to: The Fascist lie persists because truth cannot be measured against an empty program; The capitalist world’s essence is abomination yet its lying appearance stands in for truth. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 142
• SEED: Article angle: ‘the lie vs. the after times’ as two complementary framings of America’s failed reckoning.