1. The problem @mattyglesias is that this piece is really only salient for people who are high-consumers of political news. It ignores the swath of the electorate that, frankly, need ‘the facts’ spoon fed to them. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
2. People in my own life who would share click-bait propaganda on social media during the 2016 election and blankly stare at me when I told them it wasn’t a legitimate source. Add to that mindset the words of #POTUS and Fox News pundits and they are truly lost.
3. These are people that are not going to assume that the President is lying. These are people who don’t believe that DT has been lying. They believe his narrative - partly because of the legitimacy of his authority and partly due to a need for confirmation bias.
4. To tie into an earlier thread, they are using a phenomenological approach to truth as opposed to an epistemological one. They aren’t using rules of logic, but confirmation of personal experience, thoughts and beliefs.
5. The danger of journalists soft-peddling their reporting of DT’s statements as lies, is that this particular population will quite easily seize on concepts like ‘alternative facts’ or ‘unknowable truths’.
6. They are desperate for any gray area that allows them to justify their belief in DT’s narrative and their own biases. While you may not think it matters if we call a lie a lie...I believe it does. There are knowable, quantifiable facts.
7. Clearly it is up to journalists to report on those facts. It is also a fact if DT has lied to the public - and that must also be reported as such. Even if it’s every day. If we don’t, then we risk normalizing an incredibly aberrant situation and damaging the concept of truth.
8. And that is not a benign outcome. A cursory look into the history of authoritarian regimes which resulted in horrific atrocities reveal the commonality of a severely propagandized population and an erasure of a free press. We must hold that line at all costs.
