Micheal Gerson offers a very solid explanation of why Donald Trump lies:
Most of Trump’s boldest lies are devoted to protecting himself from facts that diminish him. So, his net worth must be exaggerated, no matter what his tax returns might say. His inaugural crowd must be larger than Barack Obama’s, no matter what aerial photographs clearly show. He was cheated out of a popular vote victory, no matter what the evidence indicates.
Sometimes Trump’s self-serving deceptions are hard for followers to keep straight. The Mueller report, for example, was both dismissed as the illegitimate work of Democratic agents and embraced as complete vindication on matters of collusion and obstruction. Even though the explanations are inconsistent, they are unified by Trump’s broader purpose: the bending of reality to serve his self-perception.
Some kind of personal pathology seems to be at work. Trump’s epistemology is not so much relativistic as solipsistic. He has a bottomless need to project himself as wealthier, stronger, smarter and better than he actually is. This is a sign, not of strength, but of psychological fragility. Desperation for the illusion of mastery is the evidence of deep brokenness. It indicates a hunger for affirmation that reality will never fill. This encourages both self-delusion and the spinning of elaborate, self-serving lies.
The real danger he presents is that he invites others to live inside his own disordered, delusional brain:
Trump is not only speaking a series of lies. He is inviting millions of loyalists to live in a political reality conjured by his deceptions. Any news critical of him is “fake.” Any agitprop that supports him — even by the purveyors of conspiracy theories — is to be believed. And any election he might lose is fraudulent.
Not long ago, I sat on a plane next to a knowledgeable and articulate Trump supporter. The talk turned to the Mueller report, and I mentioned that Robert Mueller was awarded the Bronze Star for his bravery in Vietnam. “How do you know that?” snapped my conversation partner. I sputtered something about reading it in multiple, reliable sources. She remained unconvinced.
When madness becomes a social disease, we are all in trouble.
Image: Zero Hedge
4 comments:
Unfortunately it seems to be a communicable disease being rapidly transmitted from one sufferer to another Owen. I hope society soon finds a cure!
It's a little frightening to see how fast the sickness is spreading, Rural. The antidote is critical thinking skills. But critical thinking takes hard work. The intellectually lazy are easy prey for people like Trump.
Even those not psychologically infirm are having problems clinging to rationality, Owen. Can you recall an earlier time in which cognitive dissonance was a sine qua non for governance? How can one be neck deep in that and not go slightly mad? Look at the drift into belief-based thought and the decline of critical thinking and fact-based knowledge. Many people today pit what they believe, what they want to believe, against what is. Isn't that what got Trump elected?
We live in a New Dark Age, Mound, where superstition trumps (pun intended) and the foundation of the Enlightenment -- Reason -- subverts democracy.
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