Syndicated columnist Jamie Stiehm: New Year's light on lies clears the air

They thought they'd fool the grown-ups and get away with it all.

George Santos and Sam Bankman-Fried are arrivistes in their 30s. A coincidence? I think not. Yet it's not only that they witnessed Donald Trump's "lie, boast and insult" presidency, with few consequences until this moment in time.

These fellas were also formed by George W. Bush's America. He tragically took the nation into the Iraq War on a pack of falsehoods. There was no price to pay, except soldier and civilian casualties.

Dishonest elders gave these young fabulists - in the FTX cryptocurrency collapse and national politics - no reason to think outlandish lies would be called out. The media gave Trump and Bush a free ride to the White House.

Santos, a New York Republican, was just elected to the House of Representatives while wanted for fraud by the Brazilian police. Campaigning in New York, he brazenly claimed to be Jewish. A refrain: "I messed up."

I spied Santos in the House chamber last week. A new speaker was due to be elected.

That brings us to Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican. His long quest to become Speaker verged on the petulant. He knows the truth that Trump sent the Jan. 6 mob to storm the Capitol, but cravenly courted him.

All that matters is winning - with Santos' support, I might add.

I witnessed the rocky roll call votes - not neat like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's election. She always had things tied up in a bow.

As partisan as McCarthy is, the hard right in his caucus rebelled in what looked like a floor mutiny. Stranger than fiction. It took 15 votes for a speaker, McCarthy, to be elected.

Now we come to the indictment of criminal fraud and money laundering charges against Bankman-Fried. He pleaded not guilty Tuesday. It's breathtaking how the Davos set, global leaders and investors put their faith in him.

In this case, the emperor had the scruffiest clothes on the planet. Perhaps the shorts and T-shirts were part of the charm. The Bahamas pile added mystique.

Now Bankman-Fried is under house arrest at his parents' posh place on the Stanford University campus, much to my African taxi driver's disbelief. The pool looks inviting. Guests are coming to visit.

"Things are out of control," the driver said.

I felt that way when I saw decadent Mar-a-Lago, Trump's base, where he skulks under a kind of house arrest. Pretty nice for a seditious president in legal jeopardy.

When it comes to Bankman-Fried, the baldfaced gall can get a bit much.

"I don't want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that," Bankman-Fried said in glory days.

Such scorn doesn't apply to the book about himself, naturally, which author Michael Lewis is at work writing. Lewis visited the detainee (at the Bankman-Fried home) and spent hours. A movie deal may go along with a brilliant blockbuster.

Lewis was ahead on the story well before FTX crashed.

Lewis and I were inseparable once upon a time, in our 30s. ("Get out your atlas, I'll meet you anywhere in the world.")

And I knew the charismatic father in the tale, Professor Joe Bankman. Seems he sought a stage beyond teaching tax law at Stanford and became a paid employee of FTX. It's impossible not to like Joe.

Here's a father-son drama worthy of Turgenev's Russian novel. We'll read all about it in Michael's book.

Now the nation needs crime and punishment.

A bemused pose is out with the old. David Brooks wrote in The New York Times, "I can't feel much anger toward Santos for his deceptiveness, just a bit of sorrow."

We're talking about the sacred People's House, sir.

On New Year's morning, I walked to the National Cathedral. The hymn singing, bells ringing and sun shining felt like leaving dark, going into the clear light. (The Quaker in me.)

Abraham Lincoln's statue stood in the corner. How could I forget? In 1863, the fog of war, Lincoln freed 4 million enslaved people on January first.

Thanks to the House probe of the Capitol riot, we have a sharp view of the armed throng of thousands that came for our democracy.

The truth sets us free across the land.

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