It is said, “Appearances are everything.” Keeping up appearances is common for a variety of legitimate reasons. Many sloppy things done in private may not look so good in public from eating, dress, housekeeping and other life-living endeavors. Not looking like the bandied about Walmart dresser is simply not wanting to look like a slob in public, but perfectly all right at home. Public appearance is not a form of deception, but simply a practice of personal presentation. Surely you want to run the vacuum before guests arrive.

Conversely, “Keeping up with the Joneses” is a form of deception. People have gone bankrupt trying to show the world a phony standard of living based on a pocket full of credit cards and loans. Eventually the house of cards can crumble. To live a lie in lifestyle, business, profession, belief or any other accountable behavior will not last forever and when revealed is viewed as deception. Being a liar and a phony in any area will result in conflict with folks, and maybe the law.

It is silly to think that someone might build a false front on a residence that looks like an upper middle class home but is concealing, say, an old house trailer. No one is ever invited over and the doorbell is never answered. There are expensive automobiles in the driveway, the payments of which take up most of the household income, but do match the false front. The charade cannot last forever; something is bound to happen that will expose it all. As attributed to Abraham Lincoln, “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

What is it about some people who try to fool all of the people all of the time? Do high profile people who build such false fronts really believe they will last forever, or in their deluded minds do they think that somehow telling more lies, or using more smoke and mirrors, will do the trick? Surely Bernie Madoff and the Enron leaders never believed they would spend the rest of their lives in the pokey. Maybe their intentions were to never get in that far until it was too late and they couldn’t get out, so they rode on hoping for the best. Waterloo was waiting.

When it comes to false fronts, government leaders are prone to make things look rosier than they are. There is nothing wrong with being optimistic and positive, but when information is knowingly falsified for ulterior motives one then becomes a dishonest liar. Dictators, repressive rulers, totalitarian regimes and all manipulators resort to such because they are simply expressing their moral imperative that “the end justifies the means,” or they simply have criminal minds. Businessmen have done the same.

In the ‘50s, North Korea built expensive phony villages along the demilitarized zone hoping to entice defections from the South. Fake facades in sub-par accommodations were built in Sochi in advance of the 2014 Russian Winter Olympics. And right here at home, Detroit decorated the boarded up plywood panels of vacant buildings by painting doors and windows on them during the 1984 World Series festivities. To fool the Wall Street analysts at a shareholders meeting, Enron set up a whole floor of fake trading at their Houston headquarters. There’s not a lack of examples.

Grigory Potemkin, a Russian military man and governor, is said to have built an entire mobile village, occupied by actors, along the Dnieper River to impress allies being given a tour of the “New Russia” by Russian Empress Catherine II. While most certainly not the first user of a “Trojan Horse,” his name is now used in many areas to denote one who intentionally deceives by lies and deception, or as is said, creates a “Potemkin Village.” There are now “Potemkin trees,” “Potemkin court,” “Potemkin shopping centers” and more. But, the epitome of “Potemkiness,” is among us.

It took a while before someone (other than on the floor of the House) finally called President Obama a liar. Since then it is difficult to find a critical piece that does not use the words “lies” and “liar” frequently. An Internet search will turn up lists of Obama lies, with some providing detailed comparisons to previous statements as well as erroneous factual data. The entire database is staggering. Several critical far-left themes dear to the heart and soul of Obama have been continually and systematically portrayed to the public, many of whom have either no time or interest to verify.

Televised images of the “rainbow White House” are etched forever in the memory of the world. How could anyone not see that beautifully decked-out White House as anything but a symbol of freedom in all its glory. Behind that Potemkin front, however, exists bogus (gay) marriage, homosexual celebration, transgender validity, punishment of protesters, persecution of Christians and prosecution of religious faith. And while the president presents this front as respect for equality, the reality behind this “Potemkin Village” is a real world of perversion, mental disorder, debased behavior and a despised blasphemy of God.

At other stops along the Potomac, Obama has constructed Potemkin Villages to present health care, education, the economy, climate and more as models of accomplishment. They all conceal blatant lies in an attempt to control. And, again, systematically Obama hammers away in a perfect impersonation of “Baghdad Bob” until the courts place their imprimatur on his schemes. Suzanne Hamner of MinutemenNews.com does not conceal her frustration when she writes, “This man lies and lies and lies on top of more lies. He couldn’t tell the truth to God himself with his life on the line.”

Obama would make Grigory Potemkin proud as he shows off his phony villages along the Potomac while giving a tour of his “New Russia.”

“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” —John 8:44

Alan Dodd blogs at plantandwater.com.