You Are Being Lied To

At the September 10th presidential debate, when pressed about Project 2025, Trump said the following:

I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it — purposefully.

This statement aligned with multiple statements he made along the trail, attempting to distance himself from the nearly thousand page document that basically reads like American right wing erotic fantasy. It's understandable why he might have felt it was important to put some space between him and the policy proposals therein. To moderate or undecided voters, a set of proposals that included practically gutting the Department of Education, tying FEMA disaster relief funds to loyalty to the federal government, or destroying the federal civil service might come across as a bit too crazy.

But as you have probably heard, all of those things happened or are happening. If he didn't care for Project 2025, why, oh why, are so many of its central ideas the goal of the president's unconstitutional executive orders? Could it be that he was lying? Yes, of course he was lying.

Since he was elected, at least seven contributors to Project 2025's malicious, anti-American bullshit have been appointed or promoted to positions in Trump's federal government.

The depravity, ubiquity, and inelegance of Trump's lies have been well documented, but poorly characterized. Multiple times since he burst onto the political scene have institutions referred to his rhetoric as "misleading" or "unsubstantiated." The very first lie that made him a Fox News mainstay was the racist assertion that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, a claim that was roundly discredited and never taken seriously by the mainstream of American media.

(Some might quibble about whether the definition of "lie" is broad enough to include something Trump believed to be true. But I don't owe him the benefit of the doubt, so I won't be giving it to him.)

Simply suggesting that untruth is being said does not do enough to combat it, but so often that is where our media and journalist institutions end their reporting. Lies are made with a purpose. The untruths the Republicans spread - that their tax cuts will magically resolve the deficit, that immigrants are dirty criminals, or that the city of Chicago might as well be a war zone - are not deployed simply for the sake of affirming their own twisted beliefs. They are doing something. So let's talk about some common Trump/Republican lies, why they are made, and how, by spotting them, you can begin to see through them.

Lies to muddy the waters

When the heat is on, the GOP tends to approach the media with a concerted effort of, uh, insincere statements. In order to divert focus and control the narrative, they flood the field with strongly phrased avowals and "what about"-isms.

You could see it this week out of Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth, two human beings who clearly fucked up, don't typically have to own their mistakes, and resorted to the typical playbook. And when these lies are done on Fox News, amongst the nation's friendliest platforms for psycho right wing stuff, the lies gain reach and the polish of expensive broadcast.

You can spot these types of lies when something so readily obvious has happened that makes someone look bad, but they march out on TV and start talking about Marxism or whatever.

Lies to confirm bias

Let's say you want to convince people, but especially those who already agree with you, that the government is spending ludicrous sums of money on frivolous stuff. Why would you want to do this? Maybe you want the government to just give you money. Maybe you want to really stick it to your political foes. Maybe you want to centralize the power of the president.

So you start calling all federal civil servants lazy, you start claiming that the US government is spending 50 million dollars to send condoms to Gaza.

These kinds of lies are not meant to convince anyone who doesn't want the government to be chainsawed. They are meant to validate the already held beliefs of the people who do. They are simply there to fuel the self righteous convictions of the already powerful and of the people who gave them power. And when questioned, they put up a man made of straw and discharge the smarmiest little "Oh, so you don't want the government to be efficient?"

Confirmation bias is amongst the most powerful forces that entrenches regressive ideologies. While so often it is framed as the tendency of people to only seek out or internalize new information, it rarely is characterized as the tendency of people to internalize disinformation.

Lies to retain power

The kinds of lies the powerful tell to retain their status is correlated to how they view their responsibility to society. And this is not just limited to politics.

Here's an example.

When Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes Meta was making to its content moderation approach, the first lines of his statement went as follows:

Hey everyone. I want to talk about something important today because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social media to give people a voice.

As many people pointed out, the "roots" of Facebook are a basic "hot or not" game Zuck made for his puerile friends at Harvard. When Facebook started, there was no news feed, there were no recommendation algorithms, thus there was no real "voice" he was giving people.

The framing here, when set alongside his apology before Congress in 2019 for failing to adequately moderate content on his platforms, gives the impression that at one point or the other, Zuck was lying. Which one doesn't even really matter to me.

What's evident is that Zuck is just crafting a narrative, building a framework around which his decision making can be validated and his company can remain extremely, world fracturingly powerful.

At the most cynical, Zuck doesn't feel he has any responsibility to society. Why else would he build apocalypse bunkers on the land he bought in Hawaii? At the least, he genuinely feels that without Meta the world is worse off. But is it that the world is worse off, or Mark is?

This is what I mean about the lies that the powerful will tell to retain their power. I believe, often to a fault, that you should say and do things with conviction, that you should have a thoughtfully constructed way to look at the world. But, as a society, we view being powerful as better than being honest. If you have to construct some false narrative to curry favor with a president or appease stockholders, you do it, because that is where the power lies.

If you see your power as something you are owed, as something endowed in you by the righteous and the similarly powerful, you will go to great lengths, even gasp lying about what you truly believe to retain your power.

But what do they really think?

At the end of the day, it does not make a difference. Whether Donald Trump actually believes that babies are being aborted at 9 months is simply not relevant. A lie like that one is there to make it seem like to even debate the topic is ridiculous, to confirm what his supporters believe, and to signal to his boosters that he will make stupendously far-fetched claims to ensure that its their side that gets the crown and sceptre. To do any sort of forensics to discover what a liar actually believes is a failed errand.

Look, instead, to what they are trying to achieve by lying. Yes, obviously they are trying to control a narrative. But what narrative? Who is their audience? To what end?

The most important thing I want to get at is that all messaging, inclusive of lies, is done with an intent. Marketing, storytelling, rhetoric, these are more powerful tools to engender support and attention than any weapon. Whether that intent is to retain power, persuade people, or stoke an emotion, all messaging serves a purpose.

Despite the open antagonism and aggrieved skepticism I have for the right, building your own framework for understanding the world is actually politically neutral. I have found that peeling back the intent behind actions, not just the actions themselves, bolsters my ability to land on what is actually important.