Lying, liars and society

[spoonitnow]

So B should do what, build a small coalition of allies, say D - G, who agree with B and who then can together plot A's downfall? Or, possibly, exploit the information disadvantage of the lower part of alphabet soup? Or both?

Either/or depending on B's goals, the pre-existing distribution of power/authority, etc. Sort of like one of those "it depends" answers.

The actual incident in consideration is an administrator, say dean A, misprepresenting matters to the faculty, B - Z. The dean holds much power, but not total. However, if his position goes unchallenged, faculty members J - Z will believe him, and the rest will be bewildered. His power will be completely undermined if Faculty Member B can convince C - Z he lied, without incurring the "societal wrath" of being the one calling someone else a liar.

Now this is the kind of detail that makes these things fun! Person A being in a position of authority makes B's actions a clearer mistake. Offending the vanity of someone who has authority over you is absolutely huge. A great historical example is Nicolas Fouquet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

So it seems that B had better options, including something like you mentioned above. A more insidious plan would be to indirectly get a rival C to realize A's deceit in hopes that C would expose A to D-Z while simultaneously bringing C and A into conflict, but being able to pull this off depends on more information that we don't have.

On the other hand like you mentioned above, if the deceit would be damaging enough to take A out of power then staging a coup could be a viable option.