"Yes. Those are also bad. But I'm not sure they actually don't make sense. They often do, at the time."

"Sometimes. And sometimes people are mean for stupid reasons, like someone looks different than them or comes from somewhere else or disagrees with them."

"Yep."

"And sometimes people elect really stupid politicians because they have a lot of money and can advertise better."

"Well, people could elect politicians they'd never heard of, instead, but I'm not sure if that would be better."

"They could also pay more attention to what the politicians were actually saying. I'm pretty sure everyone's heard of at least one non-stupid politician."

"A lot of politicians sound smart and then turn out to be stupid."

"Yes. But if the smart-sounding thing they say now and the smart-sounding thing they said a while ago contradict each other and they dodge questions about it that's a good way of telling."

"But I'd rather have one who can change their mind when they learn new things and is smart enough to know that most people won't understand that, than one who never changes their mind or says things that are obviously a bad idea to say."

"Right. But if you ask them about it and they say they changed their minds or learned better, that's different than if they dodge the question or pretend they never said the first thing."

"But politicians who claim they have learned things tend not to be elected. Which means that if one claims that, they aren't paying attention, or don't want to be elected."

"I don't want someone to be in charge of me who lies to me."

"That is a reasonable thing to want, I acknowledge."

"Yes."

"But if I wanted to be the Prime Minister or the General Secretary or the First Citizen or whatever of some city-state, I would probably want it badly enough to at least simplify things to voters if I thought that would help."

"Simplifying is different than lying. If you try to tell everyone everything they get bored and wander off."

"They're different. But they aren't totally different."

"If you don't tell someone something because you don't think they'll care that's different than if you don't tell someone something because you think they will care."

"If I tried to run for public office," says Sylvi, "in some city-states there would be a form to fill out that would ask if I've ever done that before. And I think I might have, because I had a dream about one of those previous incarnations, filling out exactly that form, although I don't remember if she actually ran or if she decided not to. But I can't tell them that. They'd think I was crazy. And they'd care a lot if I believe weird things that might mean I'm crazy; but I'd probably just write no."

"There's a difference between your personal business and the stuff you'll do as a politician though. And Mama says if telling the whole truth will make people only believe the part of the truth that's inconvenient for you then not telling isn't the same as not telling when people would believe everything."

"Fair enough."

"If a man says he wants to raise benefits for the unemployed and later he says he's slashing benefits so he can lower taxes and he won't give a straight answer why that's bad."

"Sure. But I wouldn't summarize the problem as 'lying', there."

"If he says he never said he wanted to raise benefits then that's lying, but I don't know a lot of real examples, I don't follow politics that much. That's mostly a grown-up thing."

"True. I haven't paid a lot of attention to it, but I think the past me's did."