The longer Donald Trump serves as president, the more lies are being told in our politics, and not just by Trump.
We are warned that Trump's lies are so frequent and brazen as to threaten to entrench lying in our political discourse. Lying could become "normalized" as a political tactic, to the point where the public, overwhelmed by lies and increasingly incapable of distinguishing what is true from what isn't, loses faith in our democracy and its institutions and leaders.
Fair enough.
But the problem is that those expressing such concerns are also often the same folks who downplay the lies spewed by those opposing Trump on the grounds that theirs pale in comparison to his. Put differently: Our lies are acceptable because the other guy is such a liar.
Part of the problem here, and the source of the contradiction, is the loss of common standards that can be applied to the behavior of both sides. Under conditions of extreme polarization and hyper-partisanship, a lie only becomes a lie if someone we dislike is the liar. Whatever works to gain advantage is employed and noxious behavior is condemned or excused depending upon which tribe the offender belongs to.
An example of this occurred a few months back when Elizabeth Warren sent out a tweet claiming that Michael Brown had been "murdered" by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
Warren's claim was a blatant, perhaps even libelous lie, one that in a previous era would have likely provoked outrage across the political spectrum, but rather than condemning Warren, many liberals actually ended up criticizing those who criticized her for lying, on the grounds that Trump lies even more. Apparently, in liberal assessments, unless you have condemned Trump for lying often enough you have no standing to point out the lies of others, however egregious.
Warren's behavior was thus given a pass because of Trump, thereby furthering the very normalization of lying in our discourse that Trump's critics bemoan.
As the bar gets continually lowered, our standards and expectations of behavior collapse and we progressively "define down deviancy." Those on our side never lie (although they lie a lot), and even if they do, the lies are justified by all the lies coming from the other side.
As such, the degree of long-term damage that Trump is allowed to wreak upon our body politic depends perhaps less on him than on our reaction to him--lying and other objectionable behavior attributed to Trump can become entrenched only if his critics resort to it as well.
To prevent that from happening, and thereby keep Trump from transforming our politics in his image, three steps must be taken.
First, care must be exercised lest we erode the distinction between lies and mistakes--a claim that is later proven false is not necessarily a "lie" because liars must know that what they are saying is a lie when they say it. As Sarah Green Carmichael recently wrote for Bloomberg, "Not every error or inaccuracy is a lie. A lie implies an intention to mislead, to convince others of something you know to be false."
Accusations of lying shouldn't be made carelessly, lest--like accusations of "racist" or "Nazi" or "terrorist"--they end up losing their credibility. Genuine lies are less likely to be identified as such if everyone casually calls anyone they disagree with a liar and any claim they disagree with a lie.
Second, we need to rebuild a shared political etiquette based on recognition that preserving the integrity of our public discourse is a bipartisan cause. Whatever advantage lying might provide to the liar (or his tribe) will almost certainly prove ephemeral because we all lose when lying becomes frequently resorted to because it is a tactic that is seldom punished. Raising the costs for lying will require denouncing the liars on our side as firmly as those on the other.
Finally, we must re-emphasize a commitment to truth in order to combat lies. To prevent lying from becoming more common, it becomes necessary for public figures and the media to take great pains to ensure that what they say and report is accurate and true. The proper response to lying from high places is not to imitate the liar but to double down on our commitment to truth, to do everything possible to highlight the difference between the honest and dishonest.
As uncomfortable as it might be to admit, in a system of self-government the people get the kind of politics they deserve, which is another way of saying that a virtuous people should not produce the kind of ugly, hateful and lie-filled politics we now have.
When we say that there is something wrong with our politics, we are also saying that something is wrong with us.
Given a flawed human nature, there will always been a temptation for politicians to lie for political advantage, but they will only give in to that temptation if they think they can get away with it; if, in other words, they think we are too stupid to know when being lied to.
Well, are we?
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 11/18/2019