Masters of Deception

I watched a clip of a Trump rally this week and realized that we have to be on guard more than ever for lies, deflections, exaggerations, scapegoating, red-herrings and straw man arguments.  It doesn’t just come from Trump but from his media supporters.  How do we combat this constant barrage of unfair and unethical argumentation?We all know that a lie is a blatant and intentional misrepresentation of the truth.  Trump was lying when he knowingly espoused that more people attended his inauguration than President Obama’s when the actual numbers and pictures prove contrary to the claim.  The way to combat a lie is to call it a lie and provide the truth.  Someone once said that you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your facts.  But in the age of Trump, Kelly Ann Conway came up with the defense of having “alternative facts”.  We must collectively say, “No” to such nonsense before alternative facts take hold and opinions become facts.  I’ve noticed that news people are beginning to call his lies what they are, lies, and him a liar.  Democrats should label themselves the party of reliable facts.

One of my greatest fears is that  we are bombarded with deflections by this administration.  A deflection is the diversion away from the main point.  While we are all complaining about the appallingly and blatant corruption of Scott Pruitt these past few months, we gave less attention to the dismantling of protective regulations at the EPA that ensure that we have clean water to drink and unpolluted air to breathe.  I feel like our eyes are repeatedly diverted by the outrageous comments or actions of this president while the truly dangerous and disruptive policies are underway and not reported on.  We have to demand that the our news outlets begin reporting on what is important to our lives and our democracy first and foremost.  It would be great for them to simply ignore his stupid and obnoxious behavior.  Democrats should label themselves as law-abiding and above-board.

I’ve grown exhausted by the daily assault of exaggerations from the mouth of this president.  Remember how everyone he was going to appoint were going to be the best people.  He claims to be the smartest person and the best deal maker.  Also proven to be a gross exaggeration.  He gets the people around him to exaggerate too.  Think about the doctor who claimed that he would be the healthiest president to ever take office.  Really?  The best way to deal with someone who exaggerates to this degree is to look under the hood because the opposite is more likely to be true.  His is the behavior of a con man, so let the buyer (or the American public) beware.  He over promises and under delivers.  When he told us that North Korea was no longer a threat, he was exaggerating. Democrats should highlight their reliability and management of expectation.

Those who would falsely blame others for problems are scapegoating.  From the time he announced his candidacy, he has used scapegoating to tell Americans that any problems they have are caused by immigrants and other countries whom he claims are taking advantage of us.  This is why he says we need to put America first.  It’s a sham and needs to be called a sham.   America is enjoying low unemployment and a booming economy which are in jeopardy because of the tariff war he has started all over the world.  Do we have issues, yes, but  immigrants, minorities, and other countries certainly are not to blame and there are no quick fixes for any of them.   It is a cop-out to blame others and any mature adult knows this.  Democrats need to show themselves to be the party of  inclusion and intelligent, thoughtful problem solvers who don’t alienate the rest of humanity.

Trump’s  media supporters have become masters in the art of red-herring arguments.   On Friday I watched one of his supporters argue that the failure to unite children with their parents in the court ordered timeframe was because they had to make sure the children were not going to end up in the hands of pretend families and  human traffickers.  He completely ignored the fact of their failure to track the parents and children and their failure to have an established process to reunite them.  Never mind that the statistics clearly show that less than 1% of the people who accompanied minors were shown to be pretend families and even fewer were traffickers.  These red herring arguments have become tools in the Trump administration toolbox that are taken out and used on the public every day.  They mislead and distract by attacking an opposition argument with what seems like a significant fact, but is in reality either entirely false or is highly insignificant. The only way to combat this is to call it what it is, a red herring, a way to mislead people and distract them from the real problem. The way to defeat a red herring argument is to point out it’s flaw with the actual facts.  Democrats need to be the party that uses science and research to make their arguments.

And finally, they utilize the straw-man argument to push their agenda.  Trump and Pence have latched onto the notion of a few vocal democrats who have called for the dismantling of ICE.  They are now making the straw man argument that the democrat platform is to abolish ICE and to have open borders because democrats want to allow terrorists, gangs, rapists and drug dealers to come in. That is classic straw-man.  As gullible people are appalled at this false representation the democrat position, it makes him look like the reasonable person they should agree with.  He alone wants to protect our borders and by extension, them.  Fighting this kind of straw-man argument is difficult because it requires dismantling the false representation of the opposing argument before presenting the real argument.  However, it has to be done.  Democrats need to learn to fight these straw-man sound bites with truthful and ubiquitous  sound bits of their own.

In the age of Trump, we have our work cut out for us.  But it is helpful to know the tactics that are being used so that we can effectively combat them.  It is up to thinking people to ferret out the facts and the truth and to make sure our friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues are up to speed, too.  It will take an informed electorate to turn this nation around.  I hate to say it, but the majority of Trump supporters aren’t deplorable, but ignorant.  And sadly, the silence of too many Americans and particularly the Democrats are to blame.