Monday, January 23, 2017

Trump Starts Out with More of the Same--Lies


Donald Trump started off his presidency, on Inauguration Day, with yet another one of his lies. He claimed that his inauguration had drawn the biggest crowd in U.S. history. That was refuted in short order by a news outlet issuing side-by-side photos of the Trump inauguration crowd and the one that Barack Obama drew for his inauguration; the Obama crowd was clearly a lot bigger.
 
Trump and his people promptly claimed all this was a lie and a fraud. I guess we are to believe that the photo of the Obama inauguration audience had been photoshopped.
 
A policeman once told me of a doctrine that they use to help decide if an assertion should be believed. It's known as cui bono, meaning (translated a bit loosely), Who would benefit (if that were true)? In this case, who has more to gain my lying, the Trumpets or the media? (It also reminds me of the attempts of the Nixon administration to discredit the media as a way of deflection criticism or perhaps even scrutiny.)
 
Evidently, in trying to weigh in on whose side should be believed, or the Trumpets' practice of lying, Mr. Spicer, the new White House Press Secretary, used the phrase "alternative facts." This conjures up a very scary, dystopian image such as was depicted in George Orwell's novel 1984, where the government demanded that people believe (in some fashion) things that they knew to be false, or help in their own brainwashing to believe in these incorrect things.
 
Trump, according to a documentary program about him on the PBS series "Frontline," evidently has always believed that he could get away with telling lies. I think in his campaign he exercised the belief that, if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. This is not only cynical, it evokes the tactics of Hitler's propaganda minister Hermann Goering.
 
As I said in a previous blog posting, if only people (when they've heard Trump's lies and before they decide to vote for him) would avail themselves of means (e.g., web sites like FactCheck.org) of ascertaining whether something is true or not.

See a related article:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/alternative-facts-the-needless-lies-of-the-trump-administration/ar-AAm7jly?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=DELLDHP
 
Copyright © 2017.

Friday, January 20, 2017

Politicians' Lies

According to an article by the Associated Press and appearing on MSN.com, Donald Trump, in his inauguration speech today, made several statements which the AP, rather tactfully, termed exaggerations:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-trump-starts-on-familiar-note-with-exaggeration/ar-AAm4guB?li=AA5a8k

This probably should not surprise anyone, since  his campaign was full of claims and statements of very doubtful truthfulness. To me it is very, very sad that someone can get himself elected based on selling the voters a bunch of lies. (Of course I have to think that the voters, ultimately, are to blame for this state of affairs--but then probably not too many people know where to find fact-checking.)

I wonder whether all politicians are untruthful. Studies have shown that people will say that politicians (for example, Congressmen) are a pack of scumbags--presumably liars and perhaps stupid as well--but that their representatives are good. Or at least perfectly okay.

I wonder whether my readers believe that all politicians lie, at least at times. I'd welcome comments on that.

Copyright (c) 2017

Thursday, January 19, 2017

The Winner by a Slogan; or, How to Get Elected President of the United States


There are many people who are saddened, disappointed, and alarmed by the election of Donald Trump. And there have been (and will be) many analyses as to how or why that came about.

I believe that one factor (among, doubtless, many) was his slogan, "Make America Great Again." Evidently this slogan had some effect, in terms of persuading some voters that Mr. Trump was offering something desirable for the country.
 
But, what does this mean? This is very vague, but it packs at least a couple implications, namely that America was once great, and that it no longer is (plus, that Mr. Trump can effectively do something abut that).
 
Besides questioning those two assumptions, a voter, before the election, should  have asked—at least to himself, if not aloud--"Great in what sense?" There are countless parameters or measures or rankings in which America would not score Number 1. To name just a few: per capita income; literacy; student math and science scores; life expectancy; low infant mortality—the list goes on.
 
Are these the things Trump has promised to improve? I don't think most of these are the things he talked about in his campaign speeches. The slogan is vague and, sad to say, has suckered in a lot of people who, I am sure, never stopped to really think about it.
No complex idea or issue can be adequately encapsulated in a four-word slogan. That is why I will never join in any march where the marchers are chanting some short and chantable slogan.
 
Slogans are effectively designed to discourage and even prevent real thought, by which I mean an analysis of what it is they're saying. And a great many people have never been taught or encouraged by parents or teachers to think analytically or critically. I know this from teaching: I used to berate my students for not being more critical. I'd tell them, "I could stand up here and say 'Black is white' and you'd just mechanically write that down in your notes."

I don't mean to suggest for a minute that slogans are the sole property of right-wing demagogues like Donald Trump. Barack Obama ran on the slogan, "Yes we can." Can do WHAT, fer chrissake? Did anyone stop to ask that? Surely, the people who come up with these slogans appreciate the power of the unstated, that-which-is-left-unsaid. They know slogans are vague, and pretty much let the audience supply what meaning they choose--like an ink-blot test. And they do that deliberately. Sloganeering is a fine art, and a part of propaganda as it was pretty much perfected by Hermann Goering, Hitler's propaganda  minister.

Copyright (c) 2017.