I was scrolling through the miscellany in my social media feeds while two-year-old Lyla was looking on. A cartoon image of Donald Trump appeared. "Do you know who that is?" I asked.

"Trump!" she said.

That surprised me. An emphatic recognition of Peppa Pig or SpongeBob SquarePants would have been expected, but this was our recently-elected president, a person to be taken seriously by grown-ups. What could "Trump!" mean to a two-year old?

Musing on that illuminated what ought to be obvious. Trump's fame (or notoriety) is universal; everyone has a view of Trump. These views vary greatly, but outside of his inner circle, they are all shaped by media presentations of his persona. Yet each person falls back on his or her own view of him, considering it reality, or the 'truth.'

All views are subjective, including my own. But as Lyla's enthusiasm clearly showed, not all views are equally informed. As a long-time resident of New York, I've been exposed to Trump's persona in the local media, and aware of his relentless efforts at self-promotion (which has also been part of the media coverage), long before he gained national fame.

Does everyone know he lives on the 66th floor of a 58-story building? What marketing genius. Have we all read his best-selling book, where he boasts of hiring excavation equipment to dig holes and fill them in, feigning construction in progress where there was none, in order to deceive the board of directors of a prospective corporate investor? Gaming, he calls it. Do we all recall why Mayor Koch said, "I wouldn't trust Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized"?

I can't make Lyla understand all of that. But I can set down the essence of it, in terms a child can and should understand. That is the book I wrote for Lyla, Donny J Trump is a Great Big Liar!

It will be claimed that this is political propaganda. It shouldn't be, because it's only about the character of one particular individual, and does not even mention his political views. But it has become political because he has taken over the Republican Party, and an objective exposure of his character reflects (unfavorably) upon Republicans.

It is an objective truth that Trump is a pathological liar.

Some think pathological liars exist only in fiction, like vampires or pod people inhabited by extraterrestrials. But they do exist as a psychological type; they circulate freely in society, appearing as reasonable beings, often with seductive social graces. But beneath the surface, they are self-obsessed, constantly scheming for advantage over those they encounter. They see their own superiority in the gullibility of others.

They do not consider that the truth or falsity of any statement —even one they've conjured themselves— has any inherent value. All that matters is whether or how the perception of it might be used to their advantage.

Of course the claim of this objective truth can be denied, simply by asserting that it originates in Trump's political opposition.

But I'll turn to one of Trump's most ardent supporters to illuminate the issue. She is a conservative author of great renown, who has written numerous books attacking liberals and liberalism. She was a Trump supporter even before he'd decided to run, and eagerly takes credit for urging him to make that decision.

And she has recently turned against him, for his failure to build The Wall.

We must take an aside here to reaffirm a fundamental rule of human nature. A person who believes an assertion —and who publicly affirms that belief or takes action on it— will resist being made to understand that the assertion was a lie. He or she will go to absurd lengths to avoid admitting to being fooled —that is, that he or she has been made a fool.

Thus, our former Trump enthusiast does not claim that Trump lied when he promised The Wall —and that she was a fool for believing it— but simply that he didn't deliver on his promise. He had somehow changed, betraying the conservative principles they shared.

How or why he changed is not her issue. She is outraged only because, after repeating his promise to build The Wall so many times that it became his sacred pledge to the American People, he failed to ask Congress for the money to build it.

Failed to ask Congress for the money to build it?

In dozens of campaign rallies, as many times as he promised The Wall, he had assured his supporters that Mexico would pay for it —Mexico! He'd stoked his cheering crowd, "We're going to build The Wall, and who's going to pay for it?" He'd cupped his ear, signaling for their response in unison —Mexico!

He'd trained his supporters to repeat his words back to him, reassuring him of his own speech. His rallies were a love fest of immigrant hate.

Where is her outrage —or anyone's outrage— that he has failed to make Mexico pay for the wall? Nowhere. There is none. Throughout the entire Trump Nation, there is but an eerie silence, the silence of embarrassment.

Even in writing of this, I feel I'm violating a taboo, an unspoken social agreement not to bring up a cringe-worthy episode.

Our former Trump enthusiast has intuited that this claim must be ignored, as if it didn't happen. To mention it would be to expose it as a false promise —a lie— and that exposure is intolerable to those who believed it. See the above rule of human nature.

No, no —Trump didn't lie; it wasn't a lie when he said Mexico would pay. It was ... in some other category of discourse. Campaign rhetoric, perhaps, over-the-top salesmanship, or just Trump being Trump. Or call it truthful hyperbole — the term he used in his book to justify untruth as motivational speech. Or call it podium banter, like his locker-room banter, for which he glibly denied any basis in reality (yet not to be called lying). Call it anything, but you can't call it a lie.

It couldn't be a lie, you see, because there was no attempt to deceive. And there was obviously no attempt to deceive because the assertion was so obviously absurd that no one could seriously believe it.

Our sophisticated pundit could make that case for herself and for her less sophisticated yet literate following (she writes books). They were not lied to, so Trump didn't lie. But what about the low-information voters that Trump was courting? Did they understand that chanting Mexico! had as much meaning as scooby-dooby-do, ring-a-ding-ding, lock-her-up?

Of course not. His hard-core supporters, many of whom had never before been politically active, simply believed him. They believed in the media persona he had created: an immensely wealthy, shrewd, no-nonsense, always-winning businessman. And having bought into that, they believed him when he identified the problem that was ailing America: illegal immigrants —criminals, rapists!— from Mexico.

They believed him when he claimed he would solve the problem by building The Wall. And they believed him when he said it wouldn't cost them anything in taxes because he was such a great deal-maker he could get a foreign government to pay for this country's infrastructure.

Before he'd even become the nominee, he had boasted, "I could go out on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose a single supporter." The part of this that's right is his bombastic assertion that he's created a cult of personality. He could as truthfully have said, "I can say anything and not lose a single supporter. I can say the moon is made of green cheese and that global warming is a hoax by the Chinese —and they will believe me."

Such supporters made it too easy for him to lie to them without consequence. And so he does, for his own convenience.

But our conservative author represents a more sophisticated segment of Trump's supporters. She took his promise to build The Wall as a sincere commitment, yet at the same time disregarded his rhetoric about Mexico paying for it. Clearly, she believes that she knows which of his statements are true and which are nonsense.

Except she's now discovered she was wrong in her first assumption: he's not asking Congress to fund the Wall. Will this lead her to the insight that perhaps any or all of Trump's pronouncements might be lies? (See the above rule on human nature.)

The argument will be made in Trump's defense that he cannot be said to be lying if he sincerely believes what he's saying, and it's impossible to know what he actually believes. This is not credible. In a nationally televised debate he claimed he couldn't release his tax return because it was under audit. But there's no restriction at all on making your tax data public, even when it's under review by the IRS. Trump knew that; the debate moderator even told him that. He responded by promising he would release his tax return as soon as the audit is over. Now it's over, and —is anyone surprised?— he's not releasing it.

I wrote the book to teach both children and the adults reading to them to recognize and refute lies. The issue of lying goes beyond the egregious case of Trump. Lies will be the destruction of democracy. A line from the book: "Lies make enemies; the lie believers set against the truth-perceivers..."

Beyond a child's understanding, this is a reference to how lies work to polarize society. Every citizen should clearly see the cause and effect. If a minority succeeds in taking control of society's formal structure (government), it will see the very idea of democracy as dangerous —a danger to its control and its security.

The ideology of that minority will show its fear of the majority (the masses!) and of the ideal of equality (class warfare!) because they are threats (mob rule!) to its position of power and its wealth. And it will use whatever means are available to it to turn back those threats.

The means include deception through the channels of mass propaganda —lies, not only to create a popular acceptance of its control over society, but lies to fracture society, to amplify fears, intensify disagreements, stir hatred, to keep the majority struggling against itself, unable to unite in opposition.

And when that minority has taken control of the government, its ideology and its propaganda will equate support for its policies with patriotism. It will equate the continuity of its rule with the survival of the nation. With law-making power in its hands, that minority will express the demands of its ideology in law —making opposition illegal, and consolidating its own power.

If our democratic political system is to survive, we must learn to recognize the liars and expose their lies. The political education must begin early and be refreshed often. This book is a beginning, for Lyla's generation.

Sigmund Noetzel.