Perhaps there are legitimate reasons for lying (we can save that for a separate thread). But it's still lying. I would argue that lying has nothing to do with

Perhaps there are legitimate reasons for lying (we can save that for a separate thread). But it's still lying. I would argue that lying has nothing to do with expectations. Magicians and comedians lie, but we are okay with it and we (hopefully) don't believe those statements. We just get our chuckles and forget about them. Many (not all) people expect politicians and other leaders to lie. And like you said, maybe we need them to lie, maybe the world is better for it. And I am sure there are plenty of politically correct terms to use for those instances instead of lying. But if the statement is false, then it is false. It doesn't matter how the recipient of the message interprets it, that's their problem.