Signs of Lying Rule #22—A 40-Year-old Parallel Lesson from the Hell’s Angels: People Want to Tell the Truth…
Maybe you know by now that I see (and hear) double. Or you could call it duality, parallelism… the name you give it doesn’t matter.
Plain fact is, a lot of things have the obvious side, and then another less obvious one. Most times, the less obvious angle is the most informative, revealing, and interesting.
Hunter S. Thompson rode with the Oakland, California chapter of the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club in the late 1960s, then wrote a book about the experience. They knew up front what he was doing—nothing covert there—but they weren’t entirely happy with the end product, either.
In his National Bestseller Hell’s Angel (a killer book that I recommend), founding club member Sonny Barger describes Thompson as a coward: “All show and no go.” On page 126 Sonny tells about the day Thompson got what was coming to him. He’d just finished up writing the book, and Thompson had asked to join the Angels on a gun run to Squaw Rock.
While there, a club member called Junkie George (that’s him above) got into an argument with his girlfriend and slapped her. Then George’s own dog bit him, so he kicked it. Thompson approached George and said, “Only punks slap their old ladies and kick dogs.”
Can you guess what happened next?
In Sonny’s words, George “poleaxed” Hunter S. Thompson while Sonny and several other members kicked him around. Thompson was sent away bleeding and broken up, but he had accomplished his goal. According to Barger, Thompson has gotten himself beat up by the Hell’s Angels so that he could add this to his book: “I met them, I rode with them, and I was almost killed by the Hell’s Angels.”
So where’s the duality? Well, when it comes to deception there’s always two sides. There’s what they want you to believe, and there’s “what is”.
According to club members who were around at the time, Thompson exaggerated and distorted many of the events he wrote about. So wouldn’t it have been easier just to make up a story about being thumped by the Hell’s Angels? Sure it would have, but here’s a Deception Secret: Everyone wants to have some percentage of truth in what they say.
Thompson’s antagonism of Junkie George proves my Signs of Lying Rule #22. This is a core factor regarding deception, one so powerful that you need to remember it the rest of your life: A deceptive person always wants to start with something truthful.
With truth as their basis, their foundation, they can do two things: 1-lie and distort from that point forward with a clearer conscience, and 2-appear more truthful because they can internally focus on the fact that there is truthfulness—albeit buried deeply—in what they’re saying.
So there’s some duality for you.
And I guess there’s another lesson you might keep in mind: If you really want to get thumped by the Oakland chapter of the Hell’s Angels, it won’t be that hard: Just wait for a good opening, then say something stupid.
Isn’t it odd that no matter how stressful a situation is, we can always thin of the perfectly stupid thing to say?
Getting thumped by any chapter of HA shouldn’t be a problem then.
I get it Jef
hey, Seth, right on–this technique isn’t specific to the Oakland Chapter!
Thanks for sharing your insightful analysis of this incident, and for your kind review of Sonny’s autobio.
Hey, Fritz, glad to do it. Sonny’s book is authentic & one of a kind–just like the man himself.
He’s one of the few people out there who just says it like it is and let’s the facts speak
for themselves. Pretty rare thing these days.
Thanks for your feedback, very nice, Fritz. Please give Sonny my best.
-jef
Readers: You can get all of Sonny’s books at http://sonnybarger.com/osc/index.php?cPath=181
true there are two sides to the story but it seems an agreed upon fact that Junkie george was beating his wife and Hunter was the only one who thought that wrong?
If the Hells Angels think that is alright to beat their wives then
they need to think again
Right?
The risk of using real-world examples to illustrate a subtle point is that my point can
get lost… or other points come up. Which is alright.
My real aim here was to show that even when their misleading us, people
usually start with some foundation of truth, some factual starting point.
So with this story, for example, there are lots of other points that can give us something
to talk about… you’ve hit on one, actually two: 1-was Hunter Thompson showing nobility,
standing up when no one else would? and 2-do the Hells Angels think it’s alright to beat
their ladies?
Sonny Barger’s take in the book was that Thompson was being an opportunist, not a hero.
Hey, Thompson made good use of the incident in his book, didn’t he? Was it planned that
way? Looks like it, but who knows. I’m sure there were other opportunities for him to
stand up for morality, but he chose this one.
As for the second point–which again, is getting far off course from what I was writing
about–individual members of the Hells Angels have done it all, sure. So have members of
the Teachers Union, the US Senate, and too many other groups to name. Doesn’t mean
they sanction what every person does… the individual decides.
Thanks for your thoughts, James, much appreciated!
-jef