As Hannah Arendt, one of the foremost analysts of the rise of Nazism warned, lies destroy democracy. By tolerating a serial liar like Johnson the House of Commons has become a cancer eating away our democracy. We can have democracy or the lies and liars. We cannot have both.
When lies they become endemic they breed fear, distrust, cynism and apathy, they destroy people's ability to make reasoned political judgements, they divide us into warring groups unable to converse with each other. They push society into a politics of raw emotion & brute power.
To have a reasoned disagreement with someone, you have to agree with them about almost everything. If you disagree about too much, you don't have a debate, you just have a shouting match, the other person seems mad or plain evil. That's why lies are so dangerous politically.
The Putin/Trump/Murdoch/Brexit/ Tory axis have systematically sought to undermine the shared ground of truth which underpins democratic debate. They have worked to divide society into groups incapable of reasoned communication with each other.
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