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Annoyance comments on Honesty: Beyond Internal Truth - Less Wrong
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Accepting a lie means accepting an understanding of the world that is less accurate than it could be, and that in turns limits your ability to react appropriately to reality. Any so-called positive consequences of believing the lie could also be produced by choosing a rational strategy in awareness of the truth.
Viewed as an abstract hypothetical, preferring to have believed a comforting lie rather than an unpleasant truth just isn't compatible with rationality; more importantly, it's incompatible with the desires that cause people to be rational.
Is it wrong? I happen to believe that irrationality is wrong, not merely a pragmatically poor choice, but the line of reasoning that brought me to that conclusion is a rational one; I recognize the limits to that argument. If you're a rationalist, or you wish to be, preferring the irrational is the wrong way to get there.
Perhaps, if everyone were perfectly rational, you would be right that lying is inherently hostile.
Only all else being equal is the truth clearly preferable to deceit. If the choice of deceit allows to save the world, it's inevitable for any notion of human morality to prefer deceit.
It's not inevitable. Nor is it likely, in balance, that deceit would have such large and positive effects. Far, far more probable is a shallow but wide flood of corrosive harms.