There is now convincing evidence that the plurality that voted for Donald Trump are idiots gleefully enjoying the lies they tell themselves.
Or to quote Driftglass:
But the thing is, the meatheads never Google it do they? They're never more than four or five mouse-clicks away from the facts that would put paid to their paranoid little lies, and instead -- over and over again, year after year after year -- they choose to pay people in suits to fill their empty heads with the lies that make them happy and shriek and bellow whenever anyone tried to pry them out of their toxic stupor.
Mark Twain wrote about lies once, in a perfect gem of an essay/speech he wrote called On the Decay of the Art of Lying. He noted a few things such as the fact that lies are unavoidable, they will always exist and there are few who do not practice its art. What Twain lamented was the loss of distinction between the artful lie - the gentle, convincing lie used to promote a positive gain - and the destructive or harmful lie, and that we ought to be more judicious when we do lie:
Lying is universal - we all do it. Therefore, the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling...
What I lament is the overall pass our media elite give themselves and to the Republicans as a whole but to Trump in particular when it comes to lying. I lament the fact that lies dominate our political discourse to where we can't convince each other of the honest-to-God facts anymore.
We now live in the Age of the Injurious Lie, in the era of a fabricated reality where nothing is believable except your own distorted bias.
Welcome to hell.
