Facts, Reason and Fairness in Politics

In the last few weeks, some of the engagements among commenters here, including myself, were sharp. Some got close to overheated. Emotional overheating is something to be avoided because it tends to be a fact and reason killer and a mind closer. It also is a distrust, hate, intolerance and irrationality generator. Those negative emotions are bad for civil discourse, democracy and society generally. Bad people, e.g., the Russians and Chinese, very much want us to be overheated and they do their ruthless best to foment it. The temptation to slip into it can be very hard to resist.

For people who engage in politics, common arguments the two sides adduce are quite familiar by now. On the matter of vaccines, they either cause disease or they don't, e.g. autism, autoimmune diseases, etc. Regarding the president, he is either an incompetent lying crook or someone doing a good job under very difficult and unfair conditions. On climate change, one side firmly asserts that climate scientists are liars, corrupt, the science is too uncertain to be taken seriously, there is no major consensus among experts and/or the evidence that climate change is not real or man-made is convincing. Arguments for the other side firmly asserts, more or less, the opposite on every point.

Minds do not change. Different perceptions of facts and the reason applied to them differ on the two sides. Incompatible facts and/or reason or logic is where most of these intractable differences of opinion seem to mostly or completely come from. Minds cannot change when facts and logic are at odds.

Is it unfair or counterproductive to call the president a chronic liar?

Name calling in politics tends to elicit overheating in response. Lying requires (i) belief that what what is said is false, (ii) with an intent to deceive. Fact checkers make clear that the president routinely makes false and misleading statements to the public. By now they number in the thousands, a record arguably unmatched by any other president for which enough data is available for a reasonably fair comparison. Because the president repeats some of his false or misleading statements multiple times, there is a logical reason to believe the president is lying, not just making mistakes. That is a rational basis on which to consider the president to be a chronic liar.[1] Based on repeated false assertions, at least one fact checker concludes that the president is engaged in a deliberate disinformation campaign.

Most supporters of the president reject claims that the president routinely makes false or misleading statements or that he lies much or more than other politicians. Many or most supporters dismiss the evidence of false and misleading statements and lies as opposition lies and propaganda. The evidence is usually rejected as fake news generated by ‘the enemy of the people’ press and media and/or by democrats or liberals.

Minds on this rarely change and nothing that is said here will change the intractable disagreement on this point.

In the name of civil, rational discourse, is it a mistake to call the president a chronic liar? Does it matter that some of lies the president tells are, or at least appear to be, intended to foment overheated emotional responses, as some of the president's supporters have claimed?

Is it unfair or counterproductive to call the president corrupt?

The president's conflicts of interest are abundant and undeniable. Nonetheless, most of his supporters reject that as false, arguing no real or apparent conflicts exist. Most claim that any conflicts are trivial at worst or fake news made up by democrats and/or the enemy of the people. A promise to fully insulate himself from his conflicts is not verifiable. Some ethics experts consider that the president is significantly conflicted. The GOP’s 2017 tax cut law included breaks for owners of golf courses, an undeniable conflict that the GOP could easily have closed for the president, but chose not to do.

In the name of civil, rational discourse, is it a mistake to call the president corrupt for refusal to be transparent about fully insulating himself from his business conflicts of interest? Does it matter that (1) the president strongly criticized Hillary Clinton for alleged corruption arising from conflicts from her involvement with her family charity, (2) the president's charity has been found to be a fraud he blatantly used for his personal and political gain, or (3) despite the court finding his foundation was a fraud, the president publicly asserts that the investigation into his foundation “has been 4 years of politically motivated harassment,” and instead of investigating his foundation, investigators should have spent their time investigating the Clinton Foundation.

Footnote:
1. A used here, chronic liar is intended only to refer to a sufficiently high frequency or number of public statements reasonably believed to be lies that constitutes ‘chronic lying’. It is not intended to refer to or imply any clinically diagnosable mental or physical disease or condition.

One source comments on pathological lying: “A pathological liar is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way. .... A 2016 study of what happens in the brain when you lie found that the more untruths a person tells, the easier and more frequent lying becomes. The results also indicated that self-interest seems to fuel dishonesty.”