Lying

With the renewed focus on such mistruths, it seems worthwhile to categorize the primary forms seen over the past few months in American discourse.

Take, for example, the recent case of the inauguration attendees. How many turned up (explanation of debate)

I’d categorize the justifications to Sean Spicer & Donald Trump’s comments into three buckets:

1. “Lying is bad, but they didn’t lie.”

There are already a substantial number of 9/11-Truther-style “there were actually over a million people at Trump’s inauguration but the MSM is lying to us!” theories. I won’t further elucidate how they might be mistaken.

2. “Lying is bad, but a lying Trump is better than a crooked Hillary.”

This realpolitik notion understands that Spicer & Trump told bald-faced lies in recent days, and accepts that lying is a bad thing, but rationalizes their flaws as acceptable when compared to a greater evil (in their mind, Democrats in power).

3. “Trump lied, and that’s a good thing.”

This position is the hardest to parse, but a longer version is ‘we’ve had generations of scheming, elitist politicians who hate Real America . Donald might lie, but that just shows that he’s a real person who’ll always do what’s right for Real Americans.”

(why does this matter? they’ll lie about other things, and their supporters won’t care.)