The “Black Friday” sales started weeks before Thanksgiving this year. What used to be a single day has stretched into an entire season of marketing, hype, and manufactured urgency. This creeping commercialization is more than a sales strategy. It reflects a deeper cultural shift. We have grown comfortable with misleading narratives, inflated claims, and half-truths dressed up as facts. We accept these tactics without question, and that acceptance spills over into the rest of society.

There was a time when I believed people were mostly good, that the liar, the thief, and the person trying to game the system were rare exceptions. Today, it feels as though cheating, lying, and stealing have become a widespread social norm. Not shocking. Not unusual. Not rare. Just expected.

And worse, we have built a culture that looks the other way.

Recently, my credit card number was compromised. Someone used my number to order an expensive laptop. I pieced together everything myself. What he ordered. His name. The address where the computer was being delivered.

I handed all of this to the credit card company and to the police, expecting action. Instead, both dismissed it. The company wrote it off as a cost of doing business. The police said twelve hundred dollars was not worth their time.

They told me I was not responsible for the charge.

But that was never the point.

A man stole from me, openly and knowingly, and the systems meant to provide accountability simply shrugged. The only entity willing to help was the shipping company, which told me they could have redirected the delivery had I contacted them soon enough.

Think about what that means.

We are not just tolerating dishonesty.
We are not just ignoring it.
We are enabling it.

And it extends far beyond credit card fraud or early holiday sales.

We see this in our politicians making promises they cannot possibly keep, statements created not for truth but for reaction. These are not isolated moments. They have become patterns that we expect, accept, and eventually grow numb to.

And it does not end with public figures. We mirror the culture around us. In our personal lives, we exaggerate, omit, and distort to serve ourselves. We lie, cheat, and steal in small ways from our friends, neighbors, and even our own families. Maybe it is a borrowed item never returned, a story told with convenient edits, or a commitment made with no real intention to follow through. The scale varies, but the behavior is the same.

If dishonesty is the norm in our public lives, if it is practiced and accepted by society, then it becomes the norm at home as well. It is simply a fact. What we learn is what we do. What we tolerate is what we become.

This is not about one dishonest person or one system that failed to act. It is about a culture steadily losing its expectation of truth. When lies bring rewards and truth brings inconvenience, society drifts toward the easier path.

I still want to believe people are mostly good. But goodness requires structure, expectation, and accountability. Without those, dishonesty fills every gap we fail to guard.

Maybe the real problem is not that dishonesty exists. Maybe the problem is that we have stopped holding the line against it.