The New York Times largely avoids the conflation!

THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2024

Distinguishes falsehoods from lies: At times of partisan conflict, we humans often like to accuse our opponents of lying.

Sometimes people do lie, of course. It's just isn't especially easy to know that they actually have.

Our own work was widely cited in Al Franken's 2003 book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. In fairness, Al—he was still a comedian then—was occasionally working a bit tongue in cheek. In part, he was writing a "satirical book," one with an eye-catching title.

How can you know if a public figure has lied? How do you know that a misstatement of some kind isn't a simple mistake, even perhaps a delusion?

There's no perfect answer to such questions. But saying the others are lying has become a standard way to proceed for pundits from Red America, and from Blue America too.

Directed at Donald J. Trump's endless claims, it strikes us as a lazy way to go. Also, as an approach which hasn't necessarily been gigantically helpful.

At any rate, Laura Ingraham started that way last night, one minute into her 7 o'clock prime time show on the Fox News Channel. 

Her initial focus was on the southern border. As 7:01 turned to 7:02, this is what she said:

INGRAHAM (4/10/24): From the beginning, whenever the Biden folks were pressed about the border, they started lying. And, of course, blame-shifting. 

Now first, you'll remember, it wasn't a crisis at all, said our border Caesarina. Thank you, Kamala.

It's the easiest thing in the world to do! 

The paraphrased claim that the border "wasn't a crisis at all" seemed to be the main example of "lying" to which Ingraham referred. A few minutes later, our analysts came right out of their chairs when Ingraham discussed a new approach to reducing asylum claims Biden seems to be considering.

You can read about that possible new approach in this brisk report at Axios. Last evening, Ingraham showed Biden answering a question in an interview with Univision. Then she offered this:

INGRAHAM: At this point, I'm not even sure that he knows that he's lying. But that was a lie.

If a person "doesn't know" he's lying, can he really be said to be lying? If you think the statement you're making is accurate, can it be scored as a lie?

Traditionally, the answer has strongly tended to be no, and it's been that way for obvious reasons. Traditionally, distinctions have been observed, all over the world, between two groups of misstatements:

1) A simple misstatement, made in good faith, by a person who believes that his statement is true. 

2) That less attractive type of misstatement—the kind of misstatement made by a person who knows that his statement is false.

Within mainstream American journalism, this distinction has largely been washed away in the past thirty years, first by the virulent verbal bombast of the Gingrich Revolution, then again as journalists of the center left began to challenge claims made by the George W. Bush administration.

Today, though, everyone is said to be lying all the time! If you watch the Fox News Channel, the Democrats are constantly lying. If you watch MSNBC, the lies are coming thick and fast from the people Over There.

As we noted this morning, this accusation tends to shut down discussion and debate. In our view, this has been a generally unhelpful way our own blue elites have chosen to go, but we've come to see that it's really the best the vast bulk of this cadre can manage.

There is no point in trying to argue for other approaches to misstatement and / or apparent misstatement. Blue America is wed to our current approach, in which we talk to ourselves about locking Trump up and castigate everyone who tries to speak to Red America's many millions of others.

We'll only say, once again, that this strikes us as a lazy and unproductive way to proceed. For example, was the 2020 election really stolen? Trump keeps saying that it was. Here are two ways Blue America can package this for the gentleman's voters:

1) Donald J. Trump is lying to you.

2) Donald J. Trump has never presented a white paper in support of this repeated claim. He's had three years to document his various claims. Why do you he's made no attempt to do so?

As for us, we don't know what Trump may believe. We don't know if he believes anything. 

We regard Trump as (presumptively) mentally ill. We have no idea what he thinks, and the journalists we're told we should trust have all agreed that medical specialists must never be consulted about his apparently disordered mental state.

That cuts off the route to a fuller discussion. It leaves us in thrall to the same people who spent many years, decades ago, insisting to everyone who would listen that Candidate Gore was the world's biggest liar, just like his boss, President Clinton.

That was the best those people could do. Here's a basic fact about our world:

They didn't bring a lot to the table, and neither do their descendants.

This morning, we linked again to the new essay in the Washington Post which conflates falsehoods, untruths and false claims with a flashier entity—lies. We thought we'd link you to another recent essay in which the New York Times took a different approach.

The analysis appeared beneath a double headline. Dual headline included, this is the way it starts:

The Method Behind Trump’s Mistruths
A close examination of every public word from the former president during a crucial week of his campaign.

Since the beginning of his political career, Donald J. Trump has misled, mischaracterized, dissembled, exaggerated and, at times, flatly lied. His flawed statements about the border, the economy, the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 election have formed the bedrock of his 2024 campaign.

Though his penchant for bending the truth, sometimes to the breaking point, has been well documented, a close study of how he does so reveals a kind of technique to his dishonesty: a set of recurring rhetorical moves with which Mr. Trump fuels his popularity among his supporters.

In the week starting with Mr. Trump’s victory speech in Iowa through his win in the New Hampshire primary—the contests that put him on the path to becoming his party’s nominee for the third consecutive time—The New York Times analyzed all of his public statements, including speeches, interviews and social media posts.

His words focused heavily on attacking his political rivals, self-aggrandizing and stoking fear to make his case for 2024. In doing so, Mr. Trump often relied on repeated falsehoods and half-truths. He has yet to deviate from this approach in the general election.

Here’s a look at how he does it.

At that point, the Times starts to list Trump's alleged techniques and approaches. Please note:

In the material we have posted, the Times only claims that Trump has "flatly lied" at times. 

Is a "repeated falsehood" always a lie? The Times makes no such assertion. In our own view, some such falsehood may represent the delusional belief of someone who's (severely) mentally ill, assuming anyone really believes in such constructs.

By the way, how does the Times know that Trump has ever "flatly lied?" They never attempt to nail that down, nor is it likely that they will ever try to do so. The question involved is too complex. It pretty much can't be answered.

According to the New York Times, Donald J. Trump has emitted "mistruths" and also "flawed statements."  He has relied on "falsehoods," but also on "half-truths." 

But is a falsehood just a lie? The New York Times doesn't say that. Nor will there ever be an easy way to know when some public official has "lied"—and at a time of partisan conflict, there is no imaginable way to get people to form a consensus concerning such matters, one partisan group with some other.

It all becomes a loud, angry Babel. Under current arrangements, that's good for ratings, profits and salaries, and very bad for you.

Donald J. Trump has never made a serious attempt to document his most striking claims. To our neighbors and friends, we would be inclined to say this:

Why do you think that is?

Along the way, we'd quickly acknowledge that our own side has sometimes been horrible too. After that, we'd remind our friends and neighbors of this:

You have an unending citizen's duty, just as we blue voters do.

In our view, each side has thoroughly earned its way out. That said, we'll be voting for President Biden and his strange behavior concerning various major issues, assuming things ever get that far, which they may never do.

It's the dumbness of this which drives us wild. And yet, as the poet once said—and yet, "This is [us]."