USING OUR WORDS: Discussion curtailed is discussion denied!

FRIDAY, JULY 28, 2017

Part 5—Major scribes, keeping it simple:
In the first few days of our country's new era, should NPR have reported that Donald J. Trump had "lied?"

The question created a firestorm in the first week of Donald Trump's reign. Three months later, Masha Gessen drew applause when she declared that NPR's choice of words concerning Trump had, in itself, been a lie.

Her thunder recalls sacred Thoreau, then barely thirty years of age, denouncing the varied behaviors of his Concord "townsmen."

"I have traveled a good deal in Concord," the young writer said at the start of his famous book, Walden. And everywhere, Thoreau declared, he'd seen "young men, my townsmen," whose way of life was extremely wrong, based on "the scenes which I daily witness."

How vast was the error of those young men? "Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf," Thoreau rather hotly declared.

Years later, Gessen drew applause from the world's brightest crowd as she declared that NPR's conduct was, in itself, a lie.

Is it possible that the youngish Thoreau was "labor[ing] under a mistake" as he denounced his townsmen? Since everybody makes mistakes, is it possible that Gessen was mistaken as she denounced NPR?

For the record, NPR had offered two reasons for the conduct Gessen denounced. On January 25, 2017, those reasons were proffered, not for the first time, during a three-way discussion on Morning Edition.

Senior vice president for news Michael Oreskes agreed with national security correspondent Mary Louise Kelly concerning the first of these reasons. Since NPR didn't know the state of Trump's rather disordered mind as he issued his recent misstatements, they couldn't report, as a matter of fact, that the new president had been lying when he made them.

Oreskes then stated a second reason, one he'd stated before. Way back in September 2016, he'd offered this explanation for the network's reluctance to use the fiery terms "liar" and "lie" when reporting the misstatements of then-candidate Trump:
ORESKES (9/15/16) Now a number of people have asked us why we didn't call Trump a liar. A professor named Jay Rosen actually asked why we didn't call Trump a "lying son of a b****." Others, like Amy Bradley-Hole, a fashion editor and blogger, asked the question more calmly.

It is a fair question. So here is why.

We want everyone to listen to us and read us. We want our reporting to reach as many people as possible. It is a well-established piece of social science research that if you start out with an angry tone and say something a listener disagrees with, they will tune out the facts. But if you present the facts calmly and without a tone of editorializing you substantially increase the chance that people will hear you out and weigh the facts. That is why the tone of journalism matters so much. We need potential listeners and readers to believe we are presenting the facts honestly, and not to confirm our opinions.
Should NPR have adopted a semi-Thoreauvian tone? Should they have called Candidate Trump a "liar?" Should they have called him "a lying son of a b****?"

Oreskes said that this approach would tend to drive listeners and readers away. In the aggregate, he may or may not have been right.

He also seemed to say that the use of such terms would have produced "a tone of editorializing." On this occasion, he didn't exactly speak to the journalistic accuracy of such a claim.

For what it's worth, we think Oreskes would have been better off, at several points in this discussion, if he'd referred to the known facts concerning Trump's inaccurate claims. It may, indeed, have been an actual fact that Donald J. Trump had been lying on the occasions under review. It's just that NPR wasn't in a position to know or report that as a fact, or so NPR had judged.

We tend to agree, very strongly, with NPR's basic decision. On these occasions, NPR would have been going beyond what it actually knew if it had referred to Trump's misstatements as "lies."

In early May, Gessen's claim to the contrary drew applause from an admittedly brilliant crowd. But alas! We think her claims that day were remarkably simple-minded, perhaps a bit like sacred Thoreau's, or even like Professor Rosen's.

As is true of everyone else, we liberals may tend to overstate when feeling is running high. As we noted yesterday, Gessen's claims about the word "misstatement" were basically silly on their face, though they didn't keep her genius crowed from erupting in applause.

We liberals! We aren't nearly as smart as we think we are, and everybody else knows it. Today, let's consider the way our avatars have been tending to dumb it down—to keep it simple—when discussing the question of Trump's endless peculiar misstatements.

Last Friday, in a new Trumpcast at Slate, Dartmouth professor Brendan Nyhan discussed Trump's "misleading and unsupported statements" with Slate's Virginia Heffernan.

We regard Nyhan as one of the more constructive participants in our public discourse of the past ten years. We regard Heffernan as routinely puzzling.

That said, the pair joined forced to produce a simplified discussion of the current president's puzzling behavior. In our view, this happened in part because they refused to consider the possibility that Donald J. Trump may be some form of "mentally ill" and/or in the grip of some form of dementia.

It isn't like these possibilities haven't been raised by serious observers. It isn't that these possibilities aren't tragic, and potentially significant.

It's just that our journalists have tended to avoid these possibilities in their public discussions. Here's what happened late last week when the New Yorker's David Remnick attempted to raise these possibilities in an interview with the New York Times' Maggie Haberman:
REMNICK (7/21/17): In my memory, growing up with the New York Times, it was a very rare day—in fact, I don’t know that it existed at all—when the New York Times would say that President Johnson, or Kennedy, or Nixon, whoever—lied. Used the word “lied.” Now we have a situation in which the New York Times will go so far as to have an entire feature listing the collected lies of Donald Trump, and it’ll publish it in the newspaper and online and all the rest.

[...]

We’ve had presidents who’ve lied about the Gulf of Tonkin, and all manner of things, about intelligence regarding Iraq. So what changed?

HABERMAN: This is too frequent and too much a part of the fabric of daily life with Trump. It’s just different.

REMNICK: How do you analyze his mental state? I can’t avoid this question, because it’s more and more a matter of discussion in print, on television. If you turn on “Morning Joe”—a program that you could easily have interpreted some time ago as being quite pro-Trump, enthusiastic about him, in certain ways—now is discussing whether he has dementia. Their words, not mine. Let’s put a reality check on this. How do you analyze his grasp of life, of fact? What is his mental state?

HABERMAN: I think my psychiatry degree never came through, so I’m gonna be a bit circumspect here, or a bit circumscribed here. Look, I think that he has an amazing belief in his own ability to will what he thinks into reality. And I think that he thinks of reality as something that is subjective. So I think that what people characterize as “he’s out of touch” or “he’s not understating this” or “he seems off,” or whatever—I think he has an amazing capacity to try to draw the world as he wants it. And I think that’s a lot of it.
Is it possible that Donald J. Trump is "mentally ill" in some way? Haberman is right to be "circumspect" concerning this difficult medical question. But she basically sidestepped the question here, and Remnick quickly moved on.

If Donald J. Trump is "mentally ill" in some way, would that mean that he isn't a "liar?" Well actually yes, it might.

When you see a person in the street declaring himself to be Jesus Christ, do you normally walk away declaring that this person's a liar? Or might you think that he's "off his meds"—as he very well may be—and lacks the agency normally required for the act of telling a lie?

For ourselves, we're slow to characterize Trump's repeated ludicrous claims because it seems to us that he many be ill in some way. His possible illness changes the way we would assess his ludicrous claims. It makes us slower to claim that we know how to characterize his relentless, peculiar behavior and his endless inaccurate claims.

Is it possible that Donald J. Trump is "mentally ill" in some way? When Remnick raised the possibility, Haberman essentially avoided the discussion.

But as she did, she described Trump is a way which might suggest some form of "mental illness." What might you call it if a person "thinks of reality as something that is subjective" and "has an amazing capacity to try to draw the world as he wants it," whatever that word salad actually means?

Granted, that's largely gobbledegook. But it also starts to sound like some possible form of "mental illness."

We'll guess that Haberman may work for a paper which has decided, as editorial policy, that it doesn't want this topic discussed. The same rules seemed to be in effect when Heffernan and Nyhan discussed Trump's endless misstatements in that recent Slate Trumpcast.

Nyhan, the Dartmouth professor, is also a Times contributor. Their discussion starts around minute 9 on this tape, where Heffernan prompts Nyhan thusly:

"So tell us a little bit about the liar Donald Trump."

Instantly, Nyhan explains that a problem exists with the term "liar" because it involves the matter of intent. That said, "the pattern of misleading and unsupported statements is obviously undeniable at this point," Nyhan correctly says.

"It's almost impossible to keep track of," Nyhan says. "The severity of these falsehoods, and the frequency with which they're being promoted by the president himself and his aides and officials, really is without precedent in my lifetime...The absolute onslaught of these things is really incredible."

Those statements are all correct.

Over the next ten minutes or so, Nyhan and Heffernan discuss Donald J. Trump's "pattern of misleading and unsupported statements." Again and again, it sounds to us like Nyhan may be describing someone who may be mentally ill in some way.

Nyhan notes the fact that Donald J. Trump repeatedly "make[s] statements that are immediately and obviously false with public information, right? It takes ten seconds of Googling to show that whatever he just said is false."

He notes the fact that Donald J. Trump "won't back down on anything," even when it has been plainly shown that the statement in question is false. Before long, he seems to be channeling Haberman as he describes Trump's overall state of mind:
NYHAN (7/21/17): There's often this dream that, through words alone, we can kind of make a world the way we want it to be. And within a kind of epistemic bubble of the sort that Trump often seems to be in, and many of his most intense and hard-core supporters seem to be in, that may seem to be true, right? I mean, there's this question of to what extent reality intrudes and contradicts his sorts of claims, and how aware people within that bubble are of their actual falsehood.
Say what? "There's this question of to what extent reality intrudes" inside Trump's epistemic bubble? There's this question of how aware he is of the falsehood of his ridiculous claims?

Does it sound to you like Nyhan is describing someone who may be mentally ill in some way? Is it possible that Donald J. Trump thinks he's Jesus Christ?

Again and again, Heffernan and Nyhan seem to be describing a person who may not be well. But alas! Heffernan can't stop reverting to the simple-minded framework of "liar" and "lies," even when discussing Trump's tendency to blurt out the truth, even in ways which may send him to prison:
HEFFERNAN: Since we are in the habit of clocking Trump's lies, and it's an assumption I think in the majority of people polled that, you know, he does frequently lie, it's hard to also notice that sometimes he keeps us off guard by telling the truth, and especially about his motivations, in this florid way.

NYHAN: He has a tendency of blurting out what seem to be his real motivations that other politicians might withhold, right? The most famous example is the initial spin on Comey's removal being about how he handled the Hillary Clinton investigation, which everyone found preposterous.

[...]

But then he had the interview with NBC and he basically blurted out that the Russia investigation was uncomfortable or awkward for him and this took the pressure off, right, or whatever the wording was. So he basically conceded that the Russia investigation was the primary motivation for Comey's removal, which is a remarkable statement. I mean, it might be part of a potential obstruction of justice charge at some point, right? To put that on the record voluntarily is quite remarkable. So he does have this tendency sometimes of actually telling us what he's doing.
Donald J. Trump has this tendency of blurting out the truth, even when it might send him to prison! Because Heffernan is deeply simple-minded in her thinking, she interprets this tendency in this way:

It can't be that Trump is somehow unwell. Instead, the liar Trump "keeps us off guard" by telling us the truths!

Liberals, can we talk? Masha Gessen is an admirable figure. It's also true that her comments about NPR at her May 7 lecture were remarkably simple-minded.

Does the word "misstatement" suggest a singular occurrence? Not if you put an "s" on the end of the word, thereby making it plural!

Does the word "misstatement" suggest that Trump was well-intentioned? That he simply made an innocent mistake?

Not necessarily! Not if you say that his most recent misstatement, like many others before it, flew in the face of obvious evidence which has been widely discussed.

Our language gives us many words with which we can describe and discuss misstatements. Tomorrow, we'll wonder why we seem to love that one L-word so much.

Tomorrow: Sacred Austin's remarkable work; also, Brabender "starts to hit"

26 comments:

  1. So when ObamaCare critics say they want to fix the problems with ObamaCare, it should never reported as fact. Reporters have no idea if ObamaCare critics want to fix healthcare.

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  2. I appreciate Bob's careful linguistic discussion, but in a way it's somewhat beside the point. Politics often determines who's a "liar". Recall GW Bush's statement about Iraq's WMD's. There's every reason to think he believed what he was saying, since US and foreign spy agencies were saying that this was the case. Nevertheless, many of his political enemies called him a liar.

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    1. They called GW Bush a liar for saying Saddam Hussein threw the weapons inspectors out of Iraq. Not at first, of course, because he may have been ignorant of the truth. But when he continually repeated this claim, after being told it wasn't true, calling him a liar seemed the best course of action.

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    2. The US spy agencies were not saying that was the case. Now we can discuss whether you're lying or just presenting a very skewed view of the facts.

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    3. Ilya: NIE: We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.
      http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/us-intelligence-on-wmds-in-iraq/

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    4. David in Cal July 28, 2017 at 12:13 PM:
      I appreciate Bob's careful linguistic discussion.


      Well, there you have it, Bob. When you have a despicable liar praising you, you know you're doing something wrong.

      Delete
    5. I don't often agree with David in Cal, but he's right that there is no possible way to prove GW Bush isn't too stupid to actually believe the things he says.

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  3. But in fact it's the elites and their minions in the establishment media who live in a bubble.

    I remember they were accusing Mr Trump of lying (or of ignorance) when he implied that the Russian Federation did not invade 'Ukraine' (the territory the liberal-neonazi regime in Kiev is claiming to be entitled to control). In fact, Mr Trump was right and the media were lying.

    And that's a common occurrence: anything that contradicts their bullshit narrative is a 'lie'. The Ministry of Truth is outraged.

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    1. Do you think Trump really believes he consulted with his Generals and military experts about transgendered people in the military? Maybe. He's convinced himself he's a good businessman.

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    2. I'm not a mind-reader, Anon, so I'll let you speculate on the subject of what people you'are obsessing with may or may not have convinced themselves of. Have a pleasant dream.

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    3. Mao,
      This a discussion about what is lying and what isn't. The difference between true internal beliefs and 100% Grade A Bullshit. Trump's delusional (or bullshit) beliefs is entirely germane to the discussion.

      There are plenty of other blogs out there for you to play troll and practice that trade. Who knows, with a lot of hard work and diligence, you might eventually post something clever online. In the meantime, leave these discussions for the grown-ups here at TDH.
      Thanks.

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    4. "Thanks"

      Don't mention it. Nice to see that you apparently are capable of learning, because the horrible rudness you were consistently demonstrating a few days ago was completely unacceptable. Much better now. Keep improving, I know it's possible, I believe in you.

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    5. I'll smash your face in if you ever speak to me like that again partner.

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    6. 5:15

      I'll put a spider on your head.

      Delete
  4. I don't know why the meta question about whether someone is lying is more important than discussing misstatements and inaccuracies themselves. It seems like it could more damaging if the falsehoods and misstatements are attributable to Trump's being divorced from reality -- which he is. To paraphrase a line from "Catch 22": "...people who lie are on average more intelligent and resourceful...".

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  5. You go to war with the allies you have, not the allies you wish you have.

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  6. (anon 1:38) you are as deranged as your God-hero TRump. Seek help. The Jews? What, did you wake up from a coma that you fell into in 1933? Disgusting, and completely unprovable. I might remind you that the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu was quite chilly, but you go on believing your Reich-wing fantasies.

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  7. AnonymousJuly 28, 2017 at 1:38 PM -- the Jews have more control over Trump than was the case for any past President: two of Trump most-trusted advisers are Jewish.

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  8. Bob: "It's just that our journalists have tended to avoid these possibilities (Trump's possible mental impairment) in their public discussions."
    OK. (Except I have heard that mentioned, but never mind). If the journos were constantly stating the possibiliity/probability that Trump is deranged rather than lying, would you, Bob, be here defending that, or finding ways to show how that proves that "we" liberals are just so stupid and unfair because we have no way of proving that?
    Trump has acted like this his whole life. Has he been deranged since birth?
    At any rate, if he IS deranged, then all the more reason he should be removed. But then, who would make that diagnosis? Psychiatrists are known to disagree. Perhaps the Repubs would demand a registered Repub psychiatrist whose spouse only supports conservative causes.
    Do you see the difficulty here? Trump needs to be removed, and it's much easier to prove a lie than a deranged mental state. In other words, if his statements are often or mostly untrue or bizarre, and he abuses his power and obstructs justice, why is it necessary to show mental illness and be careful to pass judgment? The underlying condition is unimportant. The result is. The danger abides.

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  9. Bob Somerby: While I also second the question by Anonymous @ 7/28 4:19 PM (“Trump has acted like this his whole life. Has he been deranged since birth?”), I wish to enlarge it — Trump has not acted alone in spreading falsehoods, but with help (and supporting falsehoods) from others, including lawyers and cabinet members [i.e. former senators and generals], of presumed mental competence... or are they all now to be presumed non compos mentis as well?

    Just how far backwards will you bend to defend their falsehoods, and attack those who’ve done the hard work of bulldogging those falsehoods? (All the while you've been yapping at their ankles instead of Trump’s, I note....)

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    1. Dave the Guitar PlayerAugust 4, 2017 at 12:35 PM

      I think you are missing the point. Bob is saying that arguing whether Trump lied or not is not going to change anything. Every time you say Trump lied, some pro-Trump person will just say he didn't lie. And so on. If instead you clearly point out that what Trump said is not in fact true, then you can argue about the issues, rather than Trump's character. This will be much more productive and might even change some people's minds.

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  10. "..are they all now to be presumed non compos mentis as well?"
    If they are Conservatives, the answer is yes.

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