Economy under Trump

[Dill]

(12-11-2017, 01:19 PM)GMDino Wrote: No doubt.  But have you ever seen quite this level of flat out lying?  Not necessarily about the economy, but over all.

I know we had a debate over whether to call what Trump says "lies" when he was elected, but what else can you call them?

May depend upon how you define lie.  I remember Nixon, but that was about mainly ONE lie with defensive variations--was Nixon a "crook" who ordered the Watergate break in or not? Did he erase portions of the White House tapes? Was he withholding evidence? Did he know what his "plumbers" did? etc.

Then there was Johnson and Vietnam, though it was often hard to tell sometimes if Politicians and Generals were lying or heavily blinkered.  There were lying about the Gulf of Tonkin, incident certainly. 

But both Nixon and Johnson told the truth about a lot of things--laid out rational policies and led their implementation past resistance--Medicare and the China opening, for example.  

In Trump's case, the lies fly daily about an ever widening range of topics. Some have a fantastic, wholly-made-up quality that I have never seen before--e.g., thousands of Muslims in NJ cheering at the fall of the twin towers, 3-5 million illegal voters.  Some are routine to point of predictability, and stupid--no president has accomplished more in this time in office, no president had bigger numbers at his inauguration, no president touring the Middle East or Far East has ever received such acclaim. Others have at once a brutal and adolescent character--like claiming he didn't assault certain women because they were too ugly, or didn't really make fun of a disabled reporter.

In can't think of instances in which Trump seems to level with the public about his policies, explain them rationally and in detail, argue effectively against people who also know them.  We just hear they will be "great," are "the best."  The tax cut will be a Christmas present to the American people.  We don't see Trump personally fielding tough questions from the press the way a Nixon or Johnson could.

(12-11-2017, 01:26 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I will couch it in these terms: I have never seen lying to this degree that could be so easily disproven. They are much more obvious about their lying.

That is why the problem is not ultimately Trump, but his "base" of supporters and the Trump "defenders" who of course don't condone his actions but also don't see his inability to govern as harming anything more than liberal sensitivities. 

The former don't fully see through the lies, though they may partially. They like his pugnaciousness, and will respond favorably to a pugnacious lie even if they know it is a lie. The latter may see through most, but perhaps take the degree of good governance we have had for granted, and can't imagine how bad leadership, mistaken policies, and mismatches in cabinet personnel can really affect the economy or foreign policy to do lasting harm, certainly not massive harm.

"Proof" can no longer make its way past whataboutism, false equivalence, and that rhetorical device born of the internet--listing alternative facts.