The stream of lies from Trump never stops.
First, he was outraged about the Gestapo-like “raid” on Mar-a-lago. Now we know that the FBI gave the Secret Service advance notice and that Trump and Melania watched the whole event unfold over security cameras.
Then he said that the Justice Department didn’t need to search; they could just have asked politely. Now we know that they asked politely, then issued a subpoena, whereupon Trump lied to them, so that they finally they had to act.
Then he said that the documents weren’t classified. Now we know they were.
Then he said that he declassified everything. Now we know he didn’t.
Then he said that Barak Obama took classified documents too. (As if two wrongs make a right—but wait, you must have the ethical maturity of a seven-year old to understand that concept, and Trump is a three-year old in that regard.) Now we know that Obama did not.
Joe Scarborough described the ever-shifting Trump excuses on Morning Joe today like this:
I didn’t take the documents, but if I did take the documents, they weren’t classified, and if they were classified, then they were planted, and if they weren’t, I declassified them, and if I didn’t, then it’s a hoax. If it is not a hoax, Obama did it.
He keeps changing, he keeps going through the lies. You know, first, he said he was working and cooperating with government agents; then, when we found out the truth about that, he said the agents planted it. Finally, he started lying—and you’re going to talk about this in a second—saying that he had declassified them.
It sounds like three-year olds who lie to cover their tracks, get caught in the lie, then come up with another lie, and so one. They never seem to suspect that the series of lies in itself demonstrates their guilt. "No, I didn't take the cookie. The cat took the cookie." "But the cat has been outside all day." “The plumber must have taken the cookie." "The plumber hasn't been here today." "My imaginary friend Nikki took the cookie." And so on. Puerile.
Yet Trump cultists don’t mind this sort of BS at all. They love it. Why?
Why “conservatives” now lie reflexively
“Conservatives” have had problems with the truth for some time now. Newt Gingrich showed them that you could get away with lying a lot. You could even succeed with bald-faced lies for a long time.
But Trump taught them that there are absolutely no consequences at all for lying—no matter how outrageous, transparent, or ludicrous the untruths are. So they lie constantly now.
And that’s just inhuman.
Human beings are social creatures. We do best when we live in social groups—villages and cities—where division of labor, mutual assistance, and communal resources make it possible to improve ourselves beyond anything we could achieve without community.
Lying is an accursed vice. It is only our words which bind us together and make us human. —Michel de Montaigne
But community requires communication. And communication only succeeds when people are honest. Liars do not communicate at all; rather, they do the opposite—hide what they really think.
“Conservatives” who think lying is smart because it gets them what they want are inhuman. They think they can do without others, since it is clear that others will abandon them once the lies are uncovered. “Conservatives” must think they are superhuman, able to live without any help from anyone. They must think, in other words, that hey are gods.
Aristotle said that the person who lives without community is either more than human or less than human. “Conservatives” are certainly not more than human. That puts them in the subhuman category in my book.
Why are “conservatives” so in love with lying?
“Conservatives” lie so much because they are obsessed with power and fear losing it.
If you really need power, if you really need to keep reassuring yourself that you can beat back others—then you clearly fear them. And you strive for power to keep your fears at bay. You want to eliminate those who are different from you. You want huge arsenals of weapons to harm those who you believe want to harm you.
That is why “conservatives” believe as they believe and act as they act. They are deeply afraid of harm and loss. This causes them to seek power to ward off their fears. And the desire for power in turn causes them to behave antisocially, in the mistaken belief that everyone will take advantage of them if they don’t take advantage first.
And that is way subhuman beasts behave, isn’t it?
Why “conservatives” no longer belong in decent society
The framers solved the problem of self-governance, which was first clearly stated by Rousseau:
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. —Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
“Conservatives” stopped being interested in the solution to this problem decades ago. They show no interest in using the whole common force to protect the individual. They just want their individual wants, demand their individual demands, believe their individual beliefs. And above all, they insist on protecting their own stuff—no matter how unjust their demands are, and no matter whom they harm in the process.
We can’t have such people in decent society any more—not without curbing their subhuman urges to dominate others rather than to cooperate with them.
The end of the line
In a way, the torrent of lies that gush daily from Trump and his lemmings is the least of the problems America faces. In another way, it is the worst problem that America faces.
Outrageous liars belie themselves. Everyone knows that Trump is lying all the time, even his minions, lickspittles, and admirers. They also know that it makes him look guilty as hell, because he is. But they no longer know what to do except to keep lying and hope that it works for them as it has in the past. But at some point it will fail. In this way, it’s the least of our problems.
But the liars themselves are the worst of our problems. The question is whether their lies will fail before they get absolute power or after. Unless it fails before then, the rest of us are doomed to suffer their inhuman domination.
The rest of us have only one chance left to put a stop to this, to push “conservatives” back to the edges of our politics, and to reclaim the framers’ solution to the problem of the social contract.
It comes this November. If we don’t put them down then, they will steal all the levers of power and crush decent society out of existence.
And if you think the Taliban is, or the Third Reich was, inhuman, just wait. Unrestrained American “conservatism” will make those autocracies look like amusement parks.