Aside from his direct political opponents, Trump's conflict with the truth is mostly in opposition to the media and the court system. If his populist supporters cared enough about the integrity of those institutions, well, they wouldn't be populist Trump supporters. As for movement conservatives, I am sure they cringe when he outright lies, even if they look past his fibs when there is a larger unstated truth in their minds. Which is why they probably try not to think about it too much, and when they do, they remind themselves of liberal lies instead. This isn't incredibly hard when talk radio is blaring into their ears eight hours a day why this is obviously the American thing to do.
As for the administration, well, I find it pretty humorous that the president
thinks that an
opinion poll about trustworthiness can be used to
define truth.
The guy is a troll.
Defining truth by majority rule sounds a lot like this definition of
anti-intellectualism:
--Isaac Asimov
One seemingly obvious (but IMO stunning) conclusion that I've come to in the past couple of days, is: in a polarized democracy like the US, if you seriously ask the country an obvious (but apparently contentious) question, one side is bound to be dead wrong. The big question is, what happens when you give the wrong side a voice? It's like democracy in America has become a machine for creating epistemological toxic waste that we haven't figured out how to treat. The usual processing (education) seems to be failing.
In my mind, this rather tenuous relationship with universal truth just means there are deeper problems that aren't being addressed. I am sure Jon`C would say they are economic, and at this point I completely agree. Basically, if we think of lies as answers that are 'wrong', I think we should view those who would rationalize the lies as people who are just grasping for a way to express their view that the real problem in fact lies with the
question (it has been said that in politics, one should never answer the question which you were asked, but the question you
wish you were asked. Lying apparently works too, if you can pull it off--more so if you can make it into a movement. This is easier for some groups of people than others, and I also see no small coincidence that this group of people tends to "congregate" ).
IMO, conservatives are fundamentally about territory, whereas liberals are fundamentally interested in correctness. Given those GDP charts that Jon posted, it's not hard to see that the two can come into conflict. And once you understand that, it's not hard to realize just how divided the country has gotten.
I think that in order to to see 'democracy' in America return to a historically more stable modality, we'd need to see three things:
- Closer economic parity between political opponents
- Stronger political political party structures
- The establishment of accessible and comforting myths, constructed by the elite for mass consumption
If that doesn't much sound like democracy, well... it's not. But I don't think too many people in the 18th century seriously thought that democratic forces should completely rule the country, and in certain hard to control ways they have begun to.
With technology and globalization making #1 and #3 less and less likely every year, I don't see the US returning to this stable modality any time soon. It looks like we're instead going to oscillate, getting a good (depending on your point of view) government every other time, but only by completely ****ing the country for half (or all) of us, since pissing people off seems to be the only unifying force at this point.
Of course, utter panic at the systematic decay of our institutions might also work, but I wouldn't count on that, so long as the fascist in the oval office has the reigns, and conservatives remain sufficiently focused on their economic and constitutional woes to continue looking the other way.