In a court of law, truth is paramount. First we put witnesses under oath to have them to swear to the veracity of their remarks. Of course there is no way to guarantee that everyone will speak truthfully. In fact many professional witnesses give false testimony that seems exactly like the truth. The verisimilitude of their stories can fool even the best jury. But unfortunately the juries aren’t pictures of righteousness either. they often condemn a defendant in their minds before the trial starts ignoring the fundamental American precept that one is innocent until proven guilty. while most people say they accept the putative notion that justice is blind. Obviously they don’t believe it in their hearts. Then there are the lawyers. They are supposed to support their arguments with valid premises. But sometimes lawyers don’t base their arguments on any factual foundation at all. They somehow still manage to convince a jury that their description of an event is absolute final and definitive. i am skeptical however and unwilling simply to accept what lawyers say as postulates. I demand proof and I can’t dispute the oft-quoted axiom about our legal system don’t trust the lawyers.
- axiom
- axiomatic
- definitive
- precept
- veracity: veritas
- verisimilitude = veri + similli + tude
- postulate n. adj. v.
- putative (put: think, consider; depute, repute, impute, dispute, compute)
- premise (mis: send; promising, compromise, surmise, demise)
As an illusionist it’s my job to fool my audience to delude them into believing that what should be impossible is in fact real. Some people object to this trickery. they think of it as lying. but that is what magic is. clever tricks are my trade and artifice is my art. In fact, some of the tricks are very difficult to execute and the smile on my face belies the effort I’m making. Now it is true that many critics don’t like my work. Some say my tricks are too forced and contrived. Others say that I have stolen my greatest tricks from other master magicians. Such accusations are false, mean-spirited, quite spurious and I deny them completely. This profession is full of lying and mendacious types who thrive on the downfall of others. I would never double-cross any of my colleagues. I am incapable of such duplicitous behavior if anything it’s other magicians who steal from me. those cheats will stop at nothing they’ve even been spreading this bizarre myth is apocryphal story about my having died during an underwater coffin escape attempt last June.
- mendacity
- mendacious
- apocryphal Apocalypse
- spurious: out-and-out false
- delude
- belie vs betray
- duplicity: double-dealing, two-faced
- contrive
- artifice