The Political Culture of Lying

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Steven Beschloss
@StevenBeschloss
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“I really really don’t like liars who know better but who are too cowardly, ambitious or both and will continue spreading the toxic culture of lying long after the former White House occupant has left this earth.”

america.substack.com
The Political Culture of Lying
Trump has fueled it, but plenty of others are more than willing to accept and emulate this expanding culture
10:04 PM · Oct 17, 2022 from Scottsdale, AZ

https://america.substack.com/p/the-political-culture-of-lying

I don’t like liars, which makes the political world particularly dispiriting these days. It’s not like this hasn’t always been a problem—the long-held notion that politicians equate to liars is not an accident. The need to attract voters leads them to make pledges they don’t keep, make themselves look better than they really are and frequently make their opponents appear more broken and dangerous than what’s true.

But we are witnessing lying on a scale that I never have seen, fueled especially by a man who is untethered from the world of facts and principles, incapable of experiencing shame, desperate for money and power, and determined to employ bullying, threats and other violent incitements to get and keep what he wants.

Donald Trump’s cult followers, more than happy to ignore facts to sustain the trance, are quick to dismiss sustained criticism of their hero as Trump Derangement Syndrome. But the danger of this current and burgeoning dilemma is how the constant bombardment of big and small lies has dulled people’s capacity to know what is true, normalized this reality so it barely registers and convinced so many others to pursue their worst selves with the assumption that they will not face consequences for their lies. (Recall that The Washington Post tallied over 30,000 "untruths"during Trump’s four years in office and 60 percent of Republicans continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen, down only slightly after eight televised hearings of the January 6 House Select Committee.)

This topic was reignited for me after surveying Donald Trump’s response to the unanimous vote of the January 6 committee to subpoena him (which I will specifically address in a moment). But it got me thinking about a whole host of others who are convinced that lying on a major scale is the path to victory, including Vladimir Putin asserting that Russia is invading Ukraine to root out Nazis, the Supreme Court nominees swearing that they recognized Roe v. Wade was settled law in order to secure their lifetime seats on the bench, and hundreds of election deniers now on the ballot continuing to insist the 2020 election was stolen.

*snip*