The U.S. Commander-in-Chief...

The Twitterverse is lit up like a Christmas Tree.  With the POTUS impeachment trial underway, the nasty, name-calling insults are flying, and in part, being led by America’s Commander-in-Chief.  Here’s one interesting example:

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Our case against lyin’, cheatin’, liddle’ Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, Nervous Nancy Pelosi, their leader, dumb as a rock AOC, & the entire Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrat Party, starts today at 10:00 A.M. on @FoxNews, @OANN or Fake News @CNN or Fake News MSDNC!

9:37 AM · Jan 25, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

I know that it is said that geniuses can be quite eccentric.  I can get that.  They say even Einstein had a problem tying his shoelaces. But to me, in my opinion, this tweet, these musings, are of someone not quite in control of his mental faculties, let alone some “stable genius.”  And these apparently are the thoughts of a man who, it is said, occupies the “most powerful political office on the planet.”

Questions:

1. Though there are many to choose from, what is your assessment of this particular tweet by Donald Trump?  If there are any psychologists in the house, we’d especially like to read your considered, qualified thoughts.  But all feel free to analyze.
    
2. Is Donald Trump a good role model for our country, for the rest of the world, not to mention his young son, Barron, still in his somewhat formative years?
    
3. Should a man of Donald Trump’s mental state have access to and complete control over the nuclear launch codes, which cannot be questioned by (apparently) anyone?
    
4. Is America in big trouble?  If so, is it “fixable?”  If yes, “how?”

“Oh the Humanity…”

According to Axios news, "politics are driving Democrats mad."  Yep, I’m one of them.  I’m also one of the 83% who discusses politics every day.  I’m haunted by it.  It’s unnatural to be so obsessed, and I know it.  Oh, I have bouts of sanity, where I think “Que sera sera.  Out of your hands, so don’t worry about it.  Get thee to the mall©, with everyone else.”  But like some kind of vortex, I get dragged right back in by the latest news flash popping up on my phone, as the madness creeps its way back in like some sadistic grim reaper, getting his jollies at MY mental expense.  It’s sick I tell you!  Sick!!

Case in point: I was thinking this morning about how Donald J. Trump is a lot like those troubled kids, usually teenage boys, who go into a school or a movie theater and shoot up the joint as some kind of “revenge” for perceived harm done against him.  Oh, we, the family (Democrats and Republicans) see all the warning signs: his nasty, name-calling tweets; his hate-fomenting rallies; his skewed vision of reality, and aversion to actual truth/facts; his daring to push the envelope against all odds and get away with it... yet again.  All that’s left to do is make one of those videos telling us, with crazed eyes, of his future destructive plans before he acts on them.

Still, aside from those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), we as a society seemingly stand powerless, at least for the moment, to do anything about Trump’s dysfunction.  We report it to the police (the Republicans) and they brush it off.  “Not enough evidence yet.”  Yeah, but when does the evidence, enough evidence, finally come?  When it’s too late and he’s shot up the joint?  When a nuclear war ensues?  Why do we continue to play with "Trump fire" (a deranged man)?  IReallyDGI.

Anyway, I think in my “madness,” this OP is just my way of venting today.  Venting helps.  Do you want to vent a little today too?  Go ahead.  Get it off your chest.

Tell me, how do you see the Trump legacy playing out?  Prognosticate that Trump future for us.

Thanks for recommending.

GOP Belief in Christian Theocracy

In a recent closed-door speech, Attorney General William P. Barr spoke about a “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order,” citing “militant secularists” as the culprit. Barr explicitly blamed liberals as the cause:

“In other words, religion helps frame moral culture within society that instills and reinforces moral discipline. I think we all recognize that over the past 50 years religion has been under increasing attack. On the one hand, we have seen the steady erosion of our traditional Judeo-Christian moral system and a comprehensive effort to drive it from the public square. On the other hand, we see the growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism. Among these militant secularists are many so-called ‘progressives’. But where is the progress?”

The Washington Post describes the speech in an opinion piece as something that “appeared to be a tacit endorsement of theocracy.” Barr cited record levels of depression, soaring suicide rates and epidemic drug abuse arguing:

“This is not decay; it is organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values. ..... On the other hand, we see the growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism. ..... We cannot have a moral renaissance unless we succeed in passing to the next generation our faith and values in full vigor. The times are hostile to this. Public agencies, including public schools, are becoming secularized and increasingly are actively promoting moral relativism.”

Note the phrase ‘organized destruction’. It means that Barr believes secular liberals are intentionally destroying what he sees as proper morality as dictated by him and his God. Barr is a devout Catholic.

Two visions of America

Back in 2015, the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision held that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses. Religious conservatives howled for weeks that the decision constituted a massive attack on religious freedom and freedom of speech. Despite the howling, any attack on religion or speech seemed overblown to this observer. At the time, there apparently was no objective analyses of exactly what the burdens on religion and speech the Obergefell decision imposed on any religion. What burdens there were was unclear. At the time, it seemed to be more accurate to describe the situation as the church attacking the state and secularism than the other way around.

It still seems that way today. Barr’s speech is an example of an explicit, broad-based Christian attack on secularism and by implication, an attack on both atheism and religious indifference.

The problem with Barr and his speech is that they ignore objective reality. Christian morals have been significantly corrupted by the decades of GOP propaganda and now our deeply immoral demagogue president. Most American Christians who support the president practice moral relativism with a vengeance. Survey data made that point. A June 2017 article in the Economist magazine, “The political beliefs of evangelical Christians -- Personal morality in politics is negotiable, commented:

Back in 2011, white evangelicals were the most likely group to say that personal morality was important in a president, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. Since Mr Trump became the Republican standard-bearer, they have become the least likely group to say that, changing what seems like a fundamental issue of morality to accommodate their support for the president. How do evangelicals explain their support for a thrice-married adulterer whose biographers have not found a man preoccupied with his salvation? “He doesn’t pretend to be anything he’s not,” says Ed Henry, a state senator for Alabama. He sees no conflict between this and support for Mr Trump. Other evangelicals mention the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court as evidence that what they perceive as a long assault on them from the judicial branch is now over.”

Barr ignores the fact that progressives did not cause the drug epidemic or suicides. Arguably, conservatives facilitated those social ills by supporting cuts to social spending for prevention and treatment programs. Most conservatives believe government domestic spending is bad if not illegal under the constitution. Barr also conveniently ignores the fact that US taxpayers support religion by at least $82 billion/year in tax breaks. Why isn't that massive social support for religion being used to fix the problems that Barr complains of?

And, there is no way to characterize handouts of over $80 billion/year as any kind of attack on religion. It is capitulation to massive social welfare, not any form of attack.

Barr also ignores the example he himself and the anti-truth, anti-democratic demagogue he serves sets. Barr is a liar. He also shows open contempt for the rule of law. He lied about the content of the Mueller report. He continues to lie about it by continuing to refuse to provide the full Mueller report and all supporting documentation. Those are lies of omission. He refuses to investigate possible crimes by his corrupt boss and complains when the House does his job for him. He is the top law enforcement official in the US, yet he refuses to do his job. That is deeply immoral.

There is moral relativism and hypocrisy going on here. It is being practiced by Barr and Christians who actually believe Barr and his lies, and his dark vision of partisan, context-based morality. America's moral decline, if that is what we are in, is caused much more by Barr and his ilk than by secularism, which is less corrupt but more moral.

Animosity Toward Journalists & Journalism Is Spreading

The Washington Post describes a alleged incident of hostility toward journalist Ben Watson by a Customs and Border Control (CBP). The CBP is investigating the incident. The officer involved may wind up denying the story. WaPo reports that the journalist has filed a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services and he has published an article in Defense One, the news organization the journalist works for, describing the incident. WaPo writes:

It took a moment for Ben Watson to realize the officer was not joking.

Watson had just told the Customs and Border Protection staffer reviewing his passport that he works in journalism. Then the seemingly routine Thursday encounter at the Washington Dulles International Airport got tense.

“So you write propaganda, right?” Watson, the news editor at the national security site Defense One, recalled the CBP officer asking.

“No,” Watson says he replied. He affirmed again that he was a journalist.

The officer repeated his propaganda question, said Watson, who was returning from a reporting trip in Denmark.

“With his tone, and he’s looking me in the eye — I very much realized this is not a joke,” Watson told The Washington Post on Friday. Watson said he got his passport back only after agreeing with the “propaganda” charge.

The CBP officer made Watson state that he writes propaganda twice before letting him go.

Watson writes in his Defense One article: “Over the past year, several journalists have reported being harassed and even detained by U.S. customs agents. In February, CBP officials apologized to a BuzzFeed reporter who was aggressively questioned upon entering New York’s JFK Airport. In June, freelance reporter Seth Harp described his hours-long detention by CBP officers in the Austin, Texas, airport. .... Update: In an email, a CBP spokesperson said that the agency is aware of and is investigating the “allegation about an officer’s alleged inappropriate conduct at Washington Dulles International airport,” adding that the agency holds its employees accountable and does not tolerate inappropriate comments or behavior. The spokesperson declined to be identified.”

Does a president bear any responsibility for demagoguery and authoritarian behavior?

Most or all authoritarian leaders throughout history have relied on dark free speech[1] to some extent to gain acceptance and power. In recent centuries, demagogues and tyrants focus on censoring the press, sometimes forcing it to put out propaganda or go out of business.

The president’s hate of the professional press is well-known and undeniable. The effect of a leader’s rhetoric to influence public opinion and behavior is also well-known and undeniable. Are incidents of journalist harassment due to some non-trivial degree to the president’s anti-journalism rhetoric and behavior? Or, (1) does a president’s rhetoric and behavior have no cause and effect linkage in matters like this, or (2) what the president says is protected free speech and thus any effects the speech may have on people is justifiable or otherwise does not reflect badly on a president in any way?


Footnote:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), and (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism. (my label, my definition)

RETRACTED IN PART: Does the President Share Any Responsibility for Bad Behavior?

I retract the discussion below as marked. It is fake news. The girl who accused others of bullying her made her accusations up. The WaPo grossly erred by prematurely reporting this story. A follow-on story describing the real story is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/virginia-sixth-grader-now-says-she-falsely-accused-classmates-of-cutting-her-hair/2019/09/30/ad0cbd92-e390-11e9-a331-2df12d56a80b_story.html

The original WaPo article is now marked: (UPDATE: Virginia sixth-grader now says she falsely accused classmates of cutting her hair)

The damage from the mistake will be real and long-lasting. Millions of people will use this gross error by the WaPo to attack the press and its credibility. They will also use it to downplay evidence of bigotry, arguing the professional press is just propaganda, democratic talking points and the enemy of the people. In my opinion, such extreme beliefs are clearly false and highly socially damaging. Unfortunately, given the raw tribalism, hate and distrust that dominate politics, those minds cannot be changed any time soon, maybe ever.

I do not retract the portion of this discussion that focuses the broader idea on the influence of a president on society and social behavior. This story does not affect the underlying facts or logic.

RETRACTED

The Washington Post reports that white school children attacked a black 12 year old sixth-grade student:

“Fairfax County police are investigating an alleged attack on a sixth-grade girl by three boys Monday at the private Christian school they attend in Springfield, Va.
The 12-year-old girl, who is African American, told police that three white sixth-grade classmates held her down, covered her mouth, called her insulting names and used scissors to cut several of her dreadlocks from her head during recess in the playground at Immanuel Christian School.

‘I was about to go down the slide, and the three boys came up and surrounded me,’ the girl said in an interview Thursday afternoon. ‘They were saying my hair was nappy and I was ugly and I shouldn’t have been born.’”

.... She also said the boys had been bullying her at school and taking her lunch for weeks. According to Allen [the girl’s aunt], her niece was afraid to tell teachers about the incident because she feared retaliation from the boys and also didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.

“I felt hurt and angry, but I also felt compassion for them because something must have happened to them and that’s why they bully,” the girl said.

WaPo also commented that Vice President Pence’s wife, Karen Pence, teaches art part-time at the school in grades 1-5. The school is investigating the incidents, claiming it has a “zero tolerance policy” for bullying and abuse.

NOT RETRACTED

Any presidential responsibility?

Some research indicated that school bullying increased in areas of Virginia that voted for the president. Fairfax County did not vote for him. Some other research indicated that school bullying increased after the president announced his candidacy for president.

Is it rational and fair to think that the president bears some degree of responsibility for bad behavior in schools and elsewhere in society? His public rhetoric can be harsh, insulting and racially divisive. People pick up on that and some act on it. One man was arrested for planning to murder journalists at the Boston Globe after being inspired by Trump repeatedly attacking the press as the enemy of the people. Can one reasonably think that the president is, say, 50% responsible at least for the increased level of bad behaviors that arguably are tied to him, his rhetoric and his behaviors? If, instead of being divisive and polarizing, the president had turned out to be a unifier and aggressively anti-racist, would the level of bad behavior before taking power have decreased?

The Rationale for Impeachment

Democrats have decided to open an impeachment inquiry based on revelations about the president allegedly trying to extort Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden. They cite the clarity of the case and point to public confusion over existing evidence of possible impeachable actions by the president. The New York Times describes the rationale:

“The sudden embrace of an impeachment inquiry by previously reluctant House Democrats — most notably Speaker Nancy Pelosi — is attributable to one fundamental fact: They believe the new accusations against Mr. Trump are simple and serious enough to be grasped by a public overwhelmed by the constant din of complex charges and countercharges that has become the norm in today’s Washington.”

Public confusion and political blowback from that confusion was what held the democrats back. The confusion is a direct result of the power of dark free speech[1] to confuse, polarize and mislead whole societies.

The impeachment process

If enough lawmakers in the House vote to say that a president committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” the president will be impeached and possibly removed from office if enough Senators agree.

The term “high crimes and misdemeanors” originated in British common law. It constituted offenses that Parliament cited in removing crown officials. In essence, it is an abuse of power by a high-level public official and not necessarily a violation of any criminal law.

No president has been impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. The House impeached Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, but the Senate acquitted both. They went on to complete their time in office. The House impeaches by  a majority vote, but the Senate must convict by a two-thirds vote supermajority.

Although the constitution states that the Senate must hold a trial after the House impeaches, there is no enforcement mechanism. Mitch mcConnell could simply do nothing and the process would die. On the other hand, since the Senate can set the rules for an impeachment trial, they could rig the process to be minimally damaging to the president by limiting what evidence could be considered. It is also important to understand that, even if the Senate did convene a trial, the Republican majority could vote to simply dismiss the case without considering any of the evidence. Regardless of Senate rules or actions, the possibility of 66 Senators voting to impeach the president is nil. That assessment is based on the intense hate and distrust the two parties have for each other.

The important point is that impeachment is a political process more than a legal one. In legal proceedings, most or all relevant evidence and fairly well-defined laws are important. In impeachment, tribe loyalty can negate the evidence and the ill-defined impeachable offenses, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, helps make it easy to simply ignore evidence that the tribe in power in the Senate does not want to consider.

Polarization

In the Federalist Papers in 1788, Alexander Hamilton asserted that the inherently political nature of impeachment proceedings would polarize the country. An impeachment prosecution “will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”

Thus, despite how polarized Americans are now, it is possible that it could get worse. Given the fact that the Senate will not convict, maximum polarization might be avoided.

Footnote:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), and (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism. (my label, my definition)

What is the probative value of a Trump-released transcript?: Shifting the burden of proof

12:20 PST: Bloomberg cable is reporting that tomorrow the president claims he will release a transcript of his phone call to the Ukraine to dispel any criticisms about Ukrainegate -- a sleaze operation directed to extorting a foreign government into helping him discredit Joe Biden.

In view of our president's proven track record of unprecedented lying, including hiding his conversations with foreign dictators, enemies and governments, one question pops right up: will the transcript our president releases be honest?

It is reasonable to believe that whatever the president releases to the public will be a pack of lies. His supporters will cheer his patriotic honesty and transparency. Skeptics like me will demand to hear the phone call and have it confirmed as unadulterated by honest, unbiased experts, not anti-fact and anti-truth operatives working for our corrupt, treasonous liar president.

The fact checkers have made the breadth and depth of the president's lying abundantly clear. Normally I cite my sources, but the liar's track record is easy to find and clear to everyone with an open mind. It is no longer worth my time to cite the fact checkers, just like it is no longer worth it to cite the evidence that climate science deniers are wrong. Some things are just matters of settled fact.

What??

That is what logically happens when a person dedicated to facts, truths and logic (conscious reason), e.g. me, comes to believe that some things are settled matters of fact as best the human species can settle complex things. The loss of trust can be complete, and in my case it is complete for our corrupt, lying, treasonous president.

The burden of rebuttal proof is on people who disagree. I'm done wasting my time showing closed minds counter evidence here. Closed minds are impervious to facts they don't like. The burden of proof is hereby shifted to closed minds to show their evidence.

For smaller things, I'll still show evidence.

If the closed minds don't like being asked for evidence or refuse to provide it, they can get the hell out of here and don't come back.

Does the Rule of Law Apply to Politicians and Elites?

“The lives of the richest people in the world are so different from those of the rest of us, it's almost literally unimaginable. National borders are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. The laws are nothing to them. They might as well not exist.”
-- Sociologist Brooke Harrington commenting on how many very wealthy people see the rule of law

“Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.”
-- President Richard Nixon commenting on the law and the president

In an interview on the NPR program Hidden Brain, sociologist Brooke Harrington discussed her experience as a financial advisor to extremely wealthy people. Harrington took classes to train herself as a financial advisor. In the interview, she noted that her clients generally viewed both the rule of law and government differently than most people understand it. In general, the financial advisor works to maintain secrecy about the scope and amount of the client’s wealth above all other considerations. They deal with family problems such as cutting family members out of the will and hiding assets from a spouse in advance of a divorce.

Other common tasks are minimizing taxes legally (tax avoidance) and hiding assets to illegally avoid paying taxes (tax evasion). She did not state if or how financial advisors avoid criminal liability for their help in tax evasion. She did not state if she participated in tax evasion. Presumably, some financial advisors show the client how to evade taxes and then turns a blind eye to the client when he (it is usually men) commits the crime.

The rule of law

At 13:20 of the interview, Harrington comments that one of the beliefs that very wealthy people tend to share is that the laws do not apply to them: “National boundaries and laws are all optional. Taxes are optional. All forms of law are essentially optional at that level of wealth.”

Government and society

At 14:05-15:50, she elaborated on attitudes toward paying taxes: “Some of them actually do sound a lot like Donald Trump. When I heard Donald Trump say that not paying taxes made him smart and if he had paid his taxes, they would have been wasted anyway. That was like, ‘Yup, he’s the voice of a lot of very wealthy people around the world.’ .... [Other financial advisors that Harrington spoke to said their clients] are very committed to neoliberal ideology and very committed to the idea that these elite clients are doing the world a favor as wealth creators and their initiatives should be protected against governments and what they regard as theft by taxation by incompetent governments that would just waste any money they collected anyways. They also by the way, regard redistribution of collected tax as immoral because it creates dependency on the part of the poor. .... There is a strong component of ideology here. You see it in the wealth management training program. ..... About a quarter of the people I interviewed really seemed to believe quite unironically in the justice of protecting the wealth of their clients from taxation. They literally view taxation as theft, and they view government as incompetent at best and corrupt at worst. They are deeply suspicious of any sort of welfare state programs because they see it as destroying initiative.”

How the humans deal with the sleazeball

It is somewhat reassuring that only about a quarter of financial advisors feel that way. What do the others feel? At 16:25-18:00, Harrington commented about financial advisors who work for clients who cheat on taxes, wives and employees, i.e., sleazeballs: “Well, some of them don't [sleep well at night]. And I think that is one of the reasons we’re seeing a wave of leaks recently. Some people are so troubled by what they are seeing that they just can’t stomach it any longer and they blow the whistle, often with dire personal consequences. About a quarter of the people I interviewed I would characterize as being conscience-stricken about the larger impacts of their work.” She went on to comment that some advisors try to assuage their moral concerns by gently raising the problem with depriving the state of revenues by tax cheating, Those people risk losing clients who do not want to hear such things. Sleazeballs really do not care about people living in poverty.

Harrington is not the only one saying these things

A previous discussion based on the work of historian Nancy MacLean and her 2017 book, Democracy In Chains: The Deep History Of The Radical Right's Stealth Plan For America, focused on the anti-government ideology that drives the modern republican party and populism. That mindset is in accord with how Harrington describes some of the very wealthy: “In the radical right vision, power would flow from the central federal government to authoritarian, oligarchic state governments that are captured by wealthy, powerful capitalists and like-minded individuals. The goal of that form of government is to weaken and then destroy the ability of average citizens, especially minorities to work together to defend their interests using equal protection and due process as their main tool to exert influence. The ultimate goal is to elevate property rights above all other rights, including the rights of people to tax property or otherwise burden it in any way.”

Another discussion based on journalist Jane Mayer and her 2017 book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, sees the same thing: “Essentially no one on the right will accept Mayer's version of events or the authoritarian goal of the radical right to neuter the federal government, gut regulations, quash civil rights and install an oligarchy of billionaires with proclivities to kleptocracy and brass knuckles laissez-faire capitalism. The radical right sees very little room for government spending on social safety nets. Those things just increase their tax burden and they vehemently reject it. Whatever social good may come from that safety net spending, just like contrary public opinion, is of no concern whatever to the radical right. This is crowd has no compassion for anything except the oligarchs at the top.”

Obviously, not all wealthy people or corporations feel the same way about the rule of law, government and taxes. The question is, what portion do feel that way? The entire GOP has fallen to this radical anti-government ideology. The GOP is redistributing wealth from the bottom to the top, e.g., the 2017 tax cut law, where some wealthy people and corporations believe it belongs. Harrington’s comments about financial advisors suggest that at most, about 25% of them feel conscience-stricken, leaving the remaining 75% to be in full or partial accord with neoliberal anti-government ideology. Those people are helping to cheat governments worldwide out of trillions of tax dollars. And, where governments are corrupt, it is usually or always the same wealthy anti-government people and companies who are fully participating in and fomenting the corruption. That includes fomenting corruption in the US government.

Ideological Asymmetry in Moral Approval of Lying in Politics

Researchers publishing in the journal, Personality and Individual Differences (Volume 143, 1 June 2019, Pages 165-169), report finding a difference in acceptance of lying between individuals that score high on a particular personality trait and those who score low. The research investigated the relationship between ideology and moral disapproval of spreading misinformation by politicians.

The researchers found that people having higher scores on Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) were positively related to tolerance of politicians lying by commission, paltering (using truthful facts to create a false impression), and lying by omission (hiding facts or truth). The researchers wrote:

“Also, republicans were more tolerant towards politicians lying by commission and paltering than democrats. Experiment 2 (N = 395) replicated these results, and examined partisan bias. Democrats (but not republicans) showed a partisan bias in tolerance of lying by commission, whereas republicans (but not democrats) showed a partisan bias in tolerance of paltering. In both experiments, RWA and SDO mediated the relationships between political party and approval of spreading misinformation. These results suggest that right-wing individuals are more tolerant to the spreading of misinformation by politicians, although it should be noted that overall levels of approval were relatively low.”

What is interesting is the data showing that levels of tolerance toward misinformation are “relatively low.” If one accepts data showing that the president has made over 10,000 false or misleading statements is true, then most of his supporters disapprove of misinformation and lies but still support the president. If that is true, then many, maybe most, of supporters do not believe the president lies and misleads nearly as often as he doe, and/or they are unaware of unbiased assessments of the evidence as usually or always fact-based.

The other interesting observation is that the data suggests that authoritarian mindsets are somewhat more accepting of misinformation from their own side, but presumably not from political opposition. It may be the case that for hard core partisans, pundits and political players, this personality trait could be more pronounced and acceptance of lies is even greater than the subjects in the experiments described here. That would be an interesting experiment, assuming it is possible to do.

As is usual for most new social science research, these results need to be replicated to at least partly confirm their validity.