Donald Trump's "lie" problem- capacity for "self deception"

Trump unleashes his whoppers without any pushback, even as they criticize his manners and attitude.
Although Donald Trump claims to have a "white" Supreme Court all picked out, he's unable to launch an executive order to cerate his fantasy "bench".   In other words, he can't just create Supreme Court justices without Senate advice and consent.  These days, the Senate doesn't even do that, reference qualified Judge Merrick.

Moses 

As a matter of fact, the last I checked, The Ten Commandments are still a fundamental tenet of the august judicial system. Among those laws brought forth by Moses in the Old Testament is "Thou Shalt Not bear false witness...". The Ten Commandments are listed twice in the Hebrew Bible, first at Exodus 20:1–17, and then at Deuteronomy 5:4–21. Both versions state that God inscribed them on two stone tablets, which he gave toMoses. 

Nevertheless, Donald Trump continues to court the votes of Evangelical voters while he lies (See former blog).

Here's commentator Bill Moyers blog take on Donald Trump's "lie" problem.

Why Trump Can Lie and No One Seems to Care

By Neal Gabler on Moyers and Company

Donald Trump is a serial liar. Okay, to be a bit less Trumpian about it, he has trouble with the truth. If you look at Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning site that examines candidates’ pronouncements for accuracy, 76 percent of Trump’s statements are rated either “mostly false,” “false,” or “pants on fire,” which is to say off-the-charts false.

By comparison, Hillary Clinton’s total is 29 percent.

But if Trump doesn’t cotton much to the truth, he doesn’t seem to cotton much to his own ideas, either.

In fact, he waffles, flip-flops and obfuscates, sometimes changing positions from one press appearance to the next, as Peter Alexander reported on NBC Nightly News this past Monday — a rare television news critique of Trump.

I say “rare” because most of the time, as Glenn Kessler noted in The Washington Post this week, MSM — the mainstream media — just sit back and let Trump unleash his whoppers without any pushback, even as they criticize his manners and attitude.

In an ordinary political season, perhaps Trump would be under fire for his habitual untruths, like the one that Ted Cruz’s father might have been involved with Lee Harvey Oswald. This time around, though, neither the media nor the public — least of all his supporters — seem to care. Which leads to the inescapable conclusion that these days, as far as our political discourse goes, truth, logic, reason and consistency don’t seem to count for very much.

The question is why.

One simple explanation is that Trump has changed the rules. He is not a politician but a provocateur, and he isn’t held to the same standards as Clinton or Bernie Sanders or even Cruz, all of whom actually have policies. For Trump, policies are beside the point.

Another explanation is that long before Trump, social scientists observed that truth matters less to people than reinforcement, and that most of us have the ability to reformulate misstatements into truth so long as they conform to our own biases. 

We believe what we believe, and we are not changing even in the face of opposing facts (without this capacity for self-deception there would be no Fox News).

There is, however, another and even more terrifying explanation as to why the truth doesn’t seem to matter. It has less to do with Trump or our own proclivities to reshape reality than it has to do with infotainment — with the idea that a lot of information isn’t primarily about education or elevation, where truth matters, but entertainment, where it doesn’t. 

You might call it “the Winchell Effect.”

Walter Winchell, about whom I wrote a 1994 biography, was a hugely popular New York-based gossip columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain and an equally popular radio personality, although saying that is a little like saying that Michael Jordan was a basketball player. 

Winchell was the gossip columnist, with an estimated daily audience of 50 million. He practically invented the form, and the form was a long chain of snippets — rumor, prediction, innuendo — racing down the page, separated by ellipses.

Some of these snippets were scarcely more than a noun, a verb and an object: Mr. So-and-so is “that way” about Miss So-and-so. Does her husband know? In this way, Winchell became not only the minimalist master of gossip but also, quite possibly, the first tweeter – before Twitter.

If you are wondering how this is relevant to the 2016 campaign, in time Winchell turned his roving eye from entertainment to politics, deploying exactly the same arsenal to the latter as he had to the former. Thus did gossip leap the tracks from Hollywood and Broadway to Washington. In this, Winchell’s approach was a precursor of modern election coverage. He was obsessed with letting readers in on what was going to happen — the clairvoyance of rumor — rather than with what was happening or what it actually meant. 

That is, he was a horse-race handicapper long before horse-race coverage became the dominant form of political journalism.

One prominent example: At the behest of the White House, Winchell spent months floating trial balloons for Franklin D. Roosevelt and his ambitions for a third term. Basically, it was presidentially endorsed gossip.

But Winchell’s influence didn’t stop at conflating entertainment with politics — and this is where the indifference to truth comes in. Winchell reported dozens of tidbits of gossip each day. Presumably, that’s why people read him or listened to him on the radio; they wanted to be ahead of the curve. But the vast majority of these tidbits were unverifiable, and nearly half of the flashes that were verifiable turned out to be false, according to a survey conducted for a six-part New Yorker profile of Winchell by St. Clair McKelway. Since there was always a passel of new scoops every day, no one seemed to notice — or care — that he was usually wrong.

One can only assume this was because readers seemed to relish the excitement of the “news” more than they desired its accuracy. Or, to put it another way, gossip was entertainment, not information. Thus the Winchell Effect.

The Winchell Effect is alive and well in today’s politics in two respects. First, candidates can get away with saying pretty much anything they want without being held accountable so long as what they say is entertaining and so long as they keep the comments coming. Trump has been the major beneficiary of this disinclination by the MSM to examine statements. The blast of his utterances always supersedes their substance. And the MSM plays along.

To wit: Trump announced his tax plan way back in September 2015. With kudos to the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, which did look at his plan, it is just this week that most of the MSM are getting around to examining it — even as he changes it. (I may have missed it, but I still have yet to see a single story delving into Trump’s tax policies on the network news.)

Perhaps better late than never, but the fact that he could throw out wild schemes involving trillions of dollars without the media feeling the need to vet them means that primary voters had no way to understand his tax plan and see its flaws. Of course, from the MSM’s perspective, analyzing a plan would be tackling policy, not providing entertainment. And make no mistake, the candidate and the mainstream media are in the entertainment business.

And that is the second way in which the Winchell Effect changes our politics. If candidates are not accountable, neither are the political media. Like Winchell, they are not only besotted with strategies, polls, predictions, and — in the case of a few cable networks — wild, unverifiable charges, they are, like Winchell, seldom challenged when they get it all wrong.

They were wrong about Trump not being a serious candidate. They were wrong about Jeb Bush’s and Marco Rubio’s chances to get the nomination. They were wrong about the likelihood of a contested GOP convention. Since they won’t call one another out, no one callsthem out. In effect, they are implicated in the Winchell Effect as much as Trump is, which may be one reason why they don’t challenge him. Neither Trump nor the press has to be right. They just have to keep ginning up the excitement.

What this means is that our politics is no longer politics in the traditional sense of policy and governance. It is, as most of us realize, a show, a game, an ongoing reality TV saga. 

This is nothing new. The media have been bored with policy for a long time and have been pressing the horse-race narrative over real reporting for just as long. And when they do discuss policy, as The Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins observed, in a typically smart piece, they are likely to prefer the windy, absurd generalities of a Trump to the wonky policies of a Clinton. It makes better copy, and it has the added benefit that it doesn’t require any fact-checking.

Trump is the fullest flower of a non-political politics and the fullest product of the Winchell Effect. With their mutual lack of interest in the truth, Trump and the MSM deserve one another — a synergy of the showman and the gossip columnists. But do wedeserve them? Only if we allow our politics to become a way of amusing ourselves rather than the way to select a leader.

Meanwhile, Trump and the MSM will keep the misinformation coming, on the sadly correct assumption that many of us don’t really care about facts so long as we are being titillated.

NEAL GABLER is an author of five books and the recipient of two LA Times Book Prizes, Time magazine's non-fiction book of the year, USA Today's biography of the year and other awards. He is also a senior fellow at The Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, and is currently writing a biography of Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Will freedom of speech trump telling truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

When the US Supreme Court hears arguments about whether or not to allow political lies to be challenged, it seems to me, the justices should go back to law school 101, before deliberations on this case begins. History tells us the Ten Commandments were the foundation of our western legal justice system.  In the document Moses is credited with chronicling, Exodus 20:16- thou shall not bear false witness...., seems to me the high court would be trumping this tenet of the bailiff's swearing in oath and Moses, if the ruling in support of free speech, including the liberty to spread lies, is permitted to overrule what's taught in the Ten Commandments.

Of course, cynics will deny the validity of the Ten Commandments as being the foundation for our western justice system. If so, then what's the basis of the oath all witnesses take before testifying in a jury trial or before a judge?  "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth....". Although atheists are apparently permitted to omit the optional "so help me God" clause, the fact is, witnesses raise their right hand and swear to tell the truth. To do otherwise, or to lie while under oath, is called perjury, which is a crime.

It also seems to me, US Supreme Court rulings supporting Second Amendment rights to own guns, over the right of people to be protected from gun violence, likewise, trumps the Ten Commandment about "thou shall not kill".

Perhaps it's time for our US Supreme Court conservative justices, especially the Roman Catholic Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Roberts, should consider their Judeo-Christian heritage while contemplating how freedom of speech fits with the Ten Commandments.

In other words, perhaps the Supreme Court justices should read a law 101 book. Nearly all professions require refresher courses. It would be reassuring to know how the justices refreshed their judicial roots, before ruling on case law that puts our US Constitutional freedoms of speech and to bear arms, above the traditional enforcement of the Ten Commandments.

Egyptian Violence - Let's Call it What it Is: Religious War on Democracy

Dozens of Christian Churches have been burned down across Egypt over recent weeks, with more than 40 said to have come under attack amid widespread unrest in the country. 

Unrest came to a climax this week, when military personnel moved in to quash the Muslim Brotherhood protesters, who had occupied various regions, calling for attacks and violence against authorities and Christians. More than 500 were killed Wednesday.  

Let's be blunt about the source of the tragic killings going on in Egypt and Middle East. These and millions of other violent deaths, over the centuries in this tumultuous region are rooted in religious intolerance. Egypt's current turmoil is an exponentially magnified Kane and Able Bible conflict, gone viral.

Although the Egyptian violence is conceptualized as brisking on civil war, the reality is that Christian Churches are being ransacked and destroyed.  Why? It makes no sense.

Vatican City, Aug 15, 2013 / 04:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis joined proponents of religious liberty in voicing grief at the “painful news” of more than 600 deaths and numerous attacks on Christian churches in a recent wave of violence in Egypt.

Devastating images out of Cairo, following the recent military coup - because, in fact, that's what it was - look like an unthinkable nuclear holocaust.  Parts of Cairo are apparently in cinders:

I'm certainly no Egyptology expert or historian, but it seems to me, the turmoil in the Middle East has transcended my life experience and permeated my years as a human being.  It's nearly impossible for an ordinary person, someone not affiliated with the Middle East, to truly understand the nuances of centuries of conflicts.  Yet, the religious divide between Christians and Muslims are evident, throughout history.  If tolerance has existed, it's been because of strict totalitarian rules to forbid freedom of speech.  

Middle Eastern historic and religious conflicts have never been adequately resolved.  Other political and social factors, like poverty, appear to be inconsequential to the acrimony. This turmoil has simmered and erupted, like an active volcano, for many centuries, beginning in the Old Testament Biblical times.

Americans pretend we don't want to be involved in Middle Eastern violence, because we don't understand it as an ongoing religious war.  In my opinion, most Americans see the violence as being ethnic in origin.  Therefore, the false assumption is, we can't do anything about this mess.  

Yet, few Americans can define the names of the ethnic groups who are embroiled in these conflicts.  Most people in the US, I dare say, in the world, will likely say the ethnic conflicts are between "Christians" and "Muslims".  Of course, these two groups aren't necessarily ethnic groups, at all.  

Frankly, a DNA sample of Middle Eastern Christians and Muslims would likely prove these people are totally related to one another. They're the same ethnicity, but different religions; still, they're fighting a conflict with eons of history to fuel the anger, none of it, absolutely none of it, making any sense.

Except, it makes a lot of money sense when greedy people consider the money in oil rich deserts surrounding this region of the world.  

War weary Americans who, perhaps understandably, shrink from Middle East conflicts, in Egypt and Syria, etc., are facing the sad reality of seeing Christian churches destroyed, for no reason, in the incendiary conflicts.  Christians have not started these conflicts! Neither have the peaceful Muslims. Yet, Christian churches are being ransacked, while Mosques are makeshift morgues for hundreds killed in the recent Egyptian violence.

Almost miraculously, there are images of Muslims protecting some Coptic Egyptian Christian churches.  In fact, many Egyptians are also stating the obvious - regardless of Muslim or Christian, they're all Egyptians. They must take care of one another.

Coptic Christian Church in Sohag Egypt

It's impossible to predict if the growing Middle East religious and civil strife will ever be peacefully resolved. Sadly, if history is a predictor, this turmoil will tragically continue.  

I don't think anyone knows how to fix the Middle East religious strife, unless all the oil, hidden in the sands, suddenly disappears.

Thousands of years of turmoil can't be resolved anytime soon. 

Of course, some fundamentalist Christians, who adhere to a literal interpretations of the Bible, probably have just as good a vision of the outcome as politicians or international leaders.

So, the Middle East violence seems doomed to continue until some kind of democracy can prevail;  including democracy to protect religious tolerance; ....before... the Biblical alternative.... horrendously happens.

Someone must stop the Middle East violence soon, very soon. People continue being slaughtered.  None of it makes any sense.  

Democracy  must find a way of taking hold in the Middle East; but it will probably take a miracle, typical of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, to make it happen.

Entitlements for the Rich - Manifesto by Steven Pearlstein

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/i-am-a-job-creator-a-manifesto-for-the-entitled/2012/09/28/756f2e90-07ee-11e2-858a-5311df86ab04_story.html

Some voting Americans are creating a new interpretation of Biblical teaching about the poor.

Columnist Steven Pearlstein gives us words to ponder in this regard when he writes: "I am a Job Creator: A Manifesto for the Entitled"

Maine Writer's op-ed: Americans pride ourselves as a Christian nation, but seem to give little attention to the Beatitudes Jesus Christ gave us in his Sermon on the Mount. 

http://www.trinitystudycenter.com/mount/matthew_5-1-12.php 

Some claim the Sermon on the Mount is the New Testament appendix to The Ten Commandments, written in the Biblical Book of Exodus, by Moses http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+20&version=NIV

Neither Biblical document references deferential treatment for people based on race or socio-economic status. Moses didn't tell rich people or poor people "Thou shalt not steal". He said this law applies to everyone, equally. Although Jesus said the poor would inherit the earth, his reference included those who are servants of the poor. In other words, one could argue that Jesus referred to sharing the wealth. As a matter of fact, Jesus even demonstrated this generosity, by multiplying the loaves and fishes, so everyone who came to see him could eat - presumably, for free.

http://kingofages.com/2012/07/18/john-6-1-15/

Although I sure wish this manifesto had been my own creation, why re-invent this copyrighted brilliance. Here's the manifesto from Mr. Pearlstein as printed in the Washington Post (link above). By the way, pay attention to the narcissistic "I":

I am a private-equity fund manager.

I am the misunderstood superhero of American capitalism, single-handedly creating wealth and prosperity despite all the obstacles put in my way by employees, government and the media.

I am a job creator and I am entitled.

I am entitled to complain about the economy even when my stock price, my portfolio and my profits are at record levels.

I am entitled to a healthy and well-educated workforce, a modern and efficient transportation system and protection for my person and property, just as I am entitled to demonize the government workers who provide them.

I am entitled to complain bitterly about taxes that are always too high, even when they are at record lows.

I am entitled to a judicial system that efficiently enforces contracts and legal obligations on customers, suppliers and employees but does not afford them the same right in return.

I am entitled to complain about the poor quality of service provided by government agencies even as I leave my own customers on hold for 35 minutes while repeatedly telling them how important their call is.

I am entitled to a compensation package that is above average for my company’s size and industry, reflecting the company’s aspirations if not its performance.

I am entitled to have the company pay for breakfasts and lunches, a luxury car and private jet travel, my country club dues and home security systems, box seats to all major sporting events, a pension equal to my current salary and a full package of insurance — life, health, dental, disability and long-term care — through retirement.

I am entitled to have my earned income taxed as capital gains and my investment income taxed at the lowest rate anywhere in the world — or not at all.

I am entitled to inside information and favorable investment opportunities not available to ordinary investors. I am entitled to brag about my investment returns.

I am entitled to pass on my accumulated wealth tax-free to heirs, who in turn, are entitled to claim that they earned everything they have.

I am entitled to use unlimited amounts of my own or company funds to buy elections without disclosing such expenditures to shareholders or the public.

I am entitled to use company funds to burnish my own charitable reputation.

I am entitled to provide political support to radical, uncompromising politicians and then complain about how dysfunctional Washington has become.

Although I have no clue how government works, I am entitled to be consulted on public policy by politicians and bureaucrats who have no clue about how business works.

I am entitled to publicly criticize the president and members of Congress, who are not entitled to criticize me.

I am entitled to fire any worker who tries to organize a union. I am entitled to break any existing union by moving, or threatening to move, operations to a union-hostile environment.

I am entitled to a duty of care and loyalty from employees and investors who are owed no such duty in return.

I am entitled to operate my business free of all government regulations other than those written or approved by my industry.

I am entitled to load companies up with debt in order to pay myself and investors big dividends — and then blame any bankruptcy on over-compensated workers.

I am entitled to contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, loans and even bailouts from government, even as I complain about job-killing government budget deficits.

I am entitled to federal entitlement reform.

I am entitled to take credit for all the jobs I create while ignoring any jobs I destroy.
I am entitled to claim credit for all the profits made during a booming economy while blaming losses or setbacks on adverse market or economic conditions.

I am entitled to deny knowledge or responsibility for any controversial decisions made after my departure from the company, even while profiting from such decisions if they enhance shareholder value.

I am entitled to all the rights and privileges of running an American company, but owe no loyalty to American workers or taxpayers.

I am entitled to confidential information about my employees and customers while refusing even to list the company’s phone number on its Web site.

I am entitled to be treated with deference and respect by investors I mislead, customers I bamboozle, directors I manipulate and employees I view as expendable.

I am entitled to be lionized in the media without answering any questions from reporters.

I am entitled to the VIP entrance.

I am entitled to everything I have and more that I still deserve.

Maine Writer's finale:  Americans Christians! How Do You Plead?