A willful and intensely dangerous lie
Trump told another giant, walloping lie today while out campaigning.
“In many places, like California, the same person votes many times,” Trump said. “You probably heard about that. They always like to say ‘oh that’s a conspiracy theory.’ Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people.”
Lie. It’s a lie. It’s a bad, wicked, dangerous lie, and he keeps telling it. He’s been told it’s a lie by many people, but he goes on telling it.
The president stopped talking about voter fraud in public after taking criticism from Republican elected officials for making unsubstantiated charges about misconduct, not only in California but in other states that he lost, such as New Hampshire. But he never completely stopped raising the issue in private, according to people who have spoken with him.
Because he’s both bad and stupid. He doesn’t care that it’s a lie, and he’s too thick to pay attention to how they know it’s a lie.
Allegations of voter fraud have been investigated in California. Although some limited cases have been found, no evidence of large-scale fraud has ever surfaced.
“Millions and millions of people.”<— Big Lie
This is a willful and intensely dangerous lie from the President of the United States. https://t.co/F2ORFqglnW
— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) April 5, 2018
The Dump doesn’t lie, since that implies some sort of relationship to the truth. He doesn’t use language like most of us. We think it’s a way of communicating ideas, feelings, of sharing (which implies an understanding that others exist to share with, another aspect that means nothing to him.) Whereas to the Dump, language is just another tool to get what he wants. In this case, he wants admiration for his Huge Beautiful Great WIN, so he’s blowing out those sounds to get his audience to cheer him. Which it does. Mission accomplished. He doesn’t bother his ugly lumpy head about what the sounds actually say.
In other words, in philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s term, he bullshits.
Liars have some relationship to the truth: they know what it is, and they want to deceive you about it. Bullshitters don’t care about what’s true.
This is a willful and intensely dangerous president.
Kind of like a hungry Grizzly bear, except a Grizzly bear is smarter and probably smells better.
Yes, Lady Mondegreen, I saw that wonderful Frankfurt piece about bullshitters. He hit a nerve there.
Is there a “plain old vacuous I like the sound of my own voice” BS-er? Or are they all using it as a tool? My point with the Dump is that he’s in the subset of BS-ers who are using it for a few specific purposes. Put downs. Picking fights. Distraction. Chest thumping. Have I missed any?
I’m convinced it’s futile to worry about his lies. When talking about what he’s said, we’d be further ahead if we just classified his particular instance of spew according to his objective.
“This is a 100% chest-thumping BS about the election.” “This is 50% fight-picking, 50% distraction from collusion.” That kind of thing. We could argue about classification and interpretation of his goals, but at least we’d spend some time thinking about where the shell is in the shell game, instead of repeatedly noting that all his herrings are red.