Trump’s lies are not the problem. It’s the millions who swallow them who really matter
Believers: Donald Trump supporters attend the inauguration ‘freedom ball’ in Washington last month. Doesn’t it look uncannily as though some of them are performing the Nazi salute? [Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.]
We don’t need balance. We need facts.
Facts beat lies.
Uncover the facts and you lay the liar bare in all their embarrassing hideousness.
So get fact-checking, mass-media hacks. And don’t leave anybody off your list just because you like their politics.
Compulsive liars shouldn’t frighten you. They can harm no one, if no one listens to them. Compulsive believers, on the other hand: they should terrify you. Believers are the liars’ enablers. Their votes give the demagogue his power. Their trust turns the charlatan into the president. Their credulity ensures that the propaganda of half-calculating and half-mad fanatics has the power to change the world.
Compulsive believers are not just rednecks. They include figures as elevated as the British prime minister and her cabinet… So English Conservative politicians must crush their doubts and believe with a desperate compulsion that the alleged “pragmatism” of Donald Trump will triumph over his undoubted extremism, a belief that to date has as much basis in fact as creationism.
Mainstream journalists are almost as credulous… unable to cope with the fantastic lies of the new authoritarian movements. When confronted with men who lie so instinctively they believe their lies as they tell them, they can only insist on a fair hearing for the sake of “balance”. Their acceptance signals to the audience the unbelievable is worthy of belief.
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Well let’s be honest the mass media can be very reticent when it comes to honesty,
Absolutely! Those people fall into the category of apathetic non-voters who are either too lazy or unintelligent to vote and then go and complain about the results afterwards.
Politicians lying!
What are you trying to say?
Nick Cohen ha got to be one of the most reprehensible duck farts likely to grace any tabloid that will pay him to write lying crap.
Anyone who listens to his BS is happy to read lies and there are certain people who will swallow them as facts – as long as it serves their own agenda.
Where was Cohen’s condemnation of Obama’s wars which destroyed Libya and the Ukraine, destroyed the lives of ordinary Syrians in his rush to grab resources and what articles were written to denounce Obama’s murderous drone deaths now over the two thousand mark of innocent men women and children(four weddings at the last count – just waiting for the funeral to be added).
Where, for that matter, was all the condemnation from any MSM (the sycophantic Obama/Clinton lovers)? How many bloggers suddenly found some other direction to look when all this death and destruction was/is still going on? Got lost did they?
There is hypocrisy in abundance these days and it’s like a cancer that is spreading.
Are you saying he is mistaken about Trump and those who regurgitate his claims?
Are you saying that Clinton would have been a better choice? Who was outspoken against Killary and the Armageddon she would have wrought which would have been far worse than the current ******* who is POTUS. I could have given some credence to the Trump bashing if the same concerns over the deaths Obama HAS caused rather than the deaths Trump MIGHT cause. Name any POTUS who hasn’t lied. Name any Clinton “friendlies” who have told the truth – did every body bash them? Did we hear terrible condemnation when Madelaine Allbright stated that it was OK to kill half a million Iraqi children?
Where is the anger at a man who won his Nobel Peace Prize on the back of outright lies?
Nick Cohen is lying trash and has been for many decades and I would not believe a word out of his lying mouth. Hillary Clinton was and still is a vicious psycho who told more lies than Trump can even invent – where was the abject clamour of justified denouncements. Killary lost by a lot of votes despite repeated election fraud and vote rigging and Trump won – it’s called democracy, many people were happy to live by it under Bush and Obama and the suffering they caused, but suddenly democracy is trash?
Now if you had gone after any of the aforementioned or the Saudi “monarch” or Poroshenko or Netanyahu, who is currently facing charges for HIS lying and people – that would be the Palestinians – have been dying so he can live the high life and take the moral high ground this current frenzy of Trump bashing would have some credibility. Presumably not the fashion of the day.
Doesn’t really matter how much we hate Trump, what you are doing is justifying Corbyn bashing with the same tactics you supposedly deplored. That puts you at their level and no better.
Where do you see any suggestion that I’m saying Hillary Clinton would have been a better choice? The Democrats ruined their own chances by politicking Bernie Sanders off the presidential ballot paper, in my opinion.
What makes you think there’s no concern about deaths caused by Mr Obama, or scrutiny of them? Trump has already caused deaths, by the way.
Your opinion of Mr Cohen might be correct but his article makes sense in the light of everything we know about Donald Trump and the mass media.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the election because Mr Trump won the electoral colleges, by the way. More people voted for her than him. Democracy?
I’m happy to go after Netanyahu, any day of the week, if there’s a good angle by which to take him down.
And no, I’m not justifying Corbyn-bashing.
Your arguments are not making sense and I am concerned that you are trying to justify support for a man who should be unsupportable.
And please, DO NOT swear in your comments. You run the risk of having them deleted.