Sunday, November 06, 2016 10:22:53 PM
Donald Trump's lying far more sinister than distortion of facts
November 6 2016 - 5:02PM
Paul McGeough
Washington: Donald Trump's lies are so overwhelming that reporters stir them as a child does peas on a plate – marvelling at the shape and colour, but for much of the time oblivious to a greater question of "why?"
Mainstream media fact-checkers swoop, to hold the more egregious falsehoods up to the light – and to call out Trump; and their editors are increasingly comfortable with calling each lie a "lie," instead of resorting to the bendy language of the past that effectively let a liar off the hook.
VIDEO: Debate fact check: candidates go astray 01:46 .. and others ..
A fact check finds that some statements made by Republican Presidential candidates do not square with realities around the world.
Washington-based Canadian correspondent Daniel Dale has made it his mission to count every Trump lie every day – by Day 33, in mid-October, he had reached incident 253 in what he describes as the GOP candidate's "avalanche of wrongness".
By Dale's reckoning, Trump's most truthful day included just four lies; at his worst there were 25 – and that doesn't include the first two candidate's debates, in which Trump uttered 34 and 33 falsehoods of varying degrees in just 90 minutes.
Related Content
The US election is rigged, and here's the proof
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126346907
Forget Clinton and Trump - America's democracy is broken
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/forget-clinton-and-trump--americas-democracy-is-broken-and-they-cant-fix-it-20161103-gshl3c.html
But the Trump falsehoods can't be looked at in isolation.
Another key element of the Trump political style is the rate at which he changes subjects when whipping up his supporters – in one classic speech, The Washington Post counted 25 subjects in the space of five minutes. So quite often, he'll glance on an issue, just to get the lie out there.
Trump creates a parallel universe. Key indicators show the US finally is getting back on its feet economically after the 2007-09 Great Recession – 15.2 million new jobs since 2010, average hourly wages up 2.8 per cent on last year – but for Trump, that's "disastrous".
It's the same with crime – violent crime in the US is close to historic lows, but he quoted alarming figures from an agency that seems to not exist to support his "inner cities are living hell" bullet point.
Donald Trump has a new reason for optimism. Photo: AP
It's the same with his constant denigration of the media. The moderator of the first candidates' debate, Lester Holt, is a registered Republican, but Trump didn't like the debate so he denounced Holt as a Democrat.
Yet Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley worries that the media are missing the point, that language like "lie" and "bald-faced lie," or even a term like "master of bullshit" misses a more disturbing aspect of Trump's political persona and in that, that we're not addressing a crisis in mass communication.
True believers: Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cheer
as he arrives to a campaign rally. Photo: Evan Vucci
Viewed through the prism of totalitarian propaganda, Stanley detects something more than conventional politicking in Trump's commentary.
"The goal…is to sketch out a consistent system that is simple to grasp, one that both constructs and simultaneously provides an explanation for grievances against various out-groups.
The final stretch: Donald Trump on stage with six-month-old Catalina Larkin in Florida.
Photo: AP
"It is openly intended to distort reality, partly as an expression of the leader's power. Its open distortion of reality is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness."
By this argument Trump is attempting to define a simple new reality that becomes an expression of his power, a reality that justifies his value system that seeks to change the value system of his audience.
Hence his continual riff on inner-city violence. Trump's objective is to convey a sense of wild disorder, which he'd have his followers believe is caused by African Americans and immigrants – "he's doing it as a display of strength, showing he's able to define reality and lead others to accept his authoritarian value system," Stanley, the author of How Propaganda Works, writes.
He says: "The chief authoritarian values are law and order. In Trump's value system, non-whites and non-Christians are the chief threats to law and order. Trump knows that reality does not call for a value system like his; violent crime is at almost historic lows in the US. Trump is thundering about a crime wave of historic proportions because he is an authoritarian using his speech to define a simple reality that legitimates his value system, leading voters to adopt it. Its strength is that it conveys how power can define reality. Its weakness is that it obviously contradicts."
Through the campaign, analysts have parsed Trump's feigned concern for inner-city blacks, expressed mostly to predominantly white audiences, as a bid to present himself as caring to educated white women.
But, by the Stanley reading, it's a more sinister conveying to whites of his "blacks are bad" scare tactics.
On the last two days of October, as Dale was collating 27 and 19 lies respectively, pollsters for The Washington Post-ABC News were polling Americans on questions of the candidates' honesty – and Trump now polls as more honest than Clinton, by eight points.
Seems that that new reality of Trump's is working very well. Again, in searching for meaning, analysts light on what one calls American sentimentalism – "what moves the electorate is not true facts but true feelings."
But it grasps only a part of what Stanley sees as Trump's big-picture objective.
Stanley demands that we all must lift our game: "Describing what Trump has done requires us to talk not just about the importance of honesty and accuracy, but also about power, value systems and in-groups versus out-groups. It also requires us to confront the failures of elite policy that have led to an erosion of democratic norms, primarily public trust, that makes anti-democratic alternatives suddenly acceptable."
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Clinton's firewall between Trump and the White House
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/us-election-2016-donald-trumps-twin-claims-debunked-by-new-documents-and-polling-20161103-gshrqj.html
US election: Tensions at fever-pitch as polling day looms
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For white pride activist, November 9 is takeover day and Trump is a prophet
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/for-white-pride-activist-november-9-is-takeover-day-and-donald-trump-is-a-prophet-20161106-gsj2n9.html
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/donald-trumps-lying-far-more-sinister-than-distortion-of-facts-20161106-gsj5m3.html
See also:
Confessions of a Trump Fact-Checker
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125914559
The 9 types of lies Donald Trump tells the most
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126115109
‘490 False Things’: Newspaper catalogs mountain of Trump’s ‘ridiculous, obvious’ lies
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126345624
Fake story about Obamas, Hillary Clinton ensnares Sean Hannity
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126256724
So far, it appears that Huma may be guilty of one extremely heinous crime... using email.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126289836
Full Show - History Happening! US Intel Battles Globalist Takeover of America - 11/02/2016
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126352608
...there are many reasons, one clear one is because they believe him and his campaign's constant lies ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126348955
Stop lying.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126247806
November 6 2016 - 5:02PM
Paul McGeough
Washington: Donald Trump's lies are so overwhelming that reporters stir them as a child does peas on a plate – marvelling at the shape and colour, but for much of the time oblivious to a greater question of "why?"
Mainstream media fact-checkers swoop, to hold the more egregious falsehoods up to the light – and to call out Trump; and their editors are increasingly comfortable with calling each lie a "lie," instead of resorting to the bendy language of the past that effectively let a liar off the hook.
VIDEO: Debate fact check: candidates go astray 01:46 .. and others ..
A fact check finds that some statements made by Republican Presidential candidates do not square with realities around the world.
Washington-based Canadian correspondent Daniel Dale has made it his mission to count every Trump lie every day – by Day 33, in mid-October, he had reached incident 253 in what he describes as the GOP candidate's "avalanche of wrongness".
By Dale's reckoning, Trump's most truthful day included just four lies; at his worst there were 25 – and that doesn't include the first two candidate's debates, in which Trump uttered 34 and 33 falsehoods of varying degrees in just 90 minutes.
Related Content
The US election is rigged, and here's the proof
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126346907
Forget Clinton and Trump - America's democracy is broken
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/forget-clinton-and-trump--americas-democracy-is-broken-and-they-cant-fix-it-20161103-gshl3c.html
But the Trump falsehoods can't be looked at in isolation.
Another key element of the Trump political style is the rate at which he changes subjects when whipping up his supporters – in one classic speech, The Washington Post counted 25 subjects in the space of five minutes. So quite often, he'll glance on an issue, just to get the lie out there.
Trump creates a parallel universe. Key indicators show the US finally is getting back on its feet economically after the 2007-09 Great Recession – 15.2 million new jobs since 2010, average hourly wages up 2.8 per cent on last year – but for Trump, that's "disastrous".
It's the same with crime – violent crime in the US is close to historic lows, but he quoted alarming figures from an agency that seems to not exist to support his "inner cities are living hell" bullet point.
Donald Trump has a new reason for optimism. Photo: AP
It's the same with his constant denigration of the media. The moderator of the first candidates' debate, Lester Holt, is a registered Republican, but Trump didn't like the debate so he denounced Holt as a Democrat.
Yet Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley worries that the media are missing the point, that language like "lie" and "bald-faced lie," or even a term like "master of bullshit" misses a more disturbing aspect of Trump's political persona and in that, that we're not addressing a crisis in mass communication.
True believers: Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cheer
as he arrives to a campaign rally. Photo: Evan Vucci
Viewed through the prism of totalitarian propaganda, Stanley detects something more than conventional politicking in Trump's commentary.
"The goal…is to sketch out a consistent system that is simple to grasp, one that both constructs and simultaneously provides an explanation for grievances against various out-groups.
The final stretch: Donald Trump on stage with six-month-old Catalina Larkin in Florida.
Photo: AP
"It is openly intended to distort reality, partly as an expression of the leader's power. Its open distortion of reality is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness."
By this argument Trump is attempting to define a simple new reality that becomes an expression of his power, a reality that justifies his value system that seeks to change the value system of his audience.
Hence his continual riff on inner-city violence. Trump's objective is to convey a sense of wild disorder, which he'd have his followers believe is caused by African Americans and immigrants – "he's doing it as a display of strength, showing he's able to define reality and lead others to accept his authoritarian value system," Stanley, the author of How Propaganda Works, writes.
He says: "The chief authoritarian values are law and order. In Trump's value system, non-whites and non-Christians are the chief threats to law and order. Trump knows that reality does not call for a value system like his; violent crime is at almost historic lows in the US. Trump is thundering about a crime wave of historic proportions because he is an authoritarian using his speech to define a simple reality that legitimates his value system, leading voters to adopt it. Its strength is that it conveys how power can define reality. Its weakness is that it obviously contradicts."
Through the campaign, analysts have parsed Trump's feigned concern for inner-city blacks, expressed mostly to predominantly white audiences, as a bid to present himself as caring to educated white women.
But, by the Stanley reading, it's a more sinister conveying to whites of his "blacks are bad" scare tactics.
On the last two days of October, as Dale was collating 27 and 19 lies respectively, pollsters for The Washington Post-ABC News were polling Americans on questions of the candidates' honesty – and Trump now polls as more honest than Clinton, by eight points.
Seems that that new reality of Trump's is working very well. Again, in searching for meaning, analysts light on what one calls American sentimentalism – "what moves the electorate is not true facts but true feelings."
But it grasps only a part of what Stanley sees as Trump's big-picture objective.
Stanley demands that we all must lift our game: "Describing what Trump has done requires us to talk not just about the importance of honesty and accuracy, but also about power, value systems and in-groups versus out-groups. It also requires us to confront the failures of elite policy that have led to an erosion of democratic norms, primarily public trust, that makes anti-democratic alternatives suddenly acceptable."
Related Content
Clinton's firewall between Trump and the White House
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/us-election-2016-donald-trumps-twin-claims-debunked-by-new-documents-and-polling-20161103-gshrqj.html
US election: Tensions at fever-pitch as polling day looms
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/us-election-tensions-at-feverpitch-as-polling-day-looms-20161106-gsj500.html
For white pride activist, November 9 is takeover day and Trump is a prophet
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/for-white-pride-activist-november-9-is-takeover-day-and-donald-trump-is-a-prophet-20161106-gsj2n9.html
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/donald-trumps-lying-far-more-sinister-than-distortion-of-facts-20161106-gsj5m3.html
See also:
Confessions of a Trump Fact-Checker
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125914559
The 9 types of lies Donald Trump tells the most
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126115109
‘490 False Things’: Newspaper catalogs mountain of Trump’s ‘ridiculous, obvious’ lies
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126345624
Fake story about Obamas, Hillary Clinton ensnares Sean Hannity
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126256724
So far, it appears that Huma may be guilty of one extremely heinous crime... using email.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126289836
Full Show - History Happening! US Intel Battles Globalist Takeover of America - 11/02/2016
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126352608
...there are many reasons, one clear one is because they believe him and his campaign's constant lies ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126348955
Stop lying.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126247806
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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