Lies and More Lies
I picture a cartoon in the New Yorker: a child with her mother watching Trump on TV–“Mommy, how do I stop myself becoming a billionaire?”
The level of lying reached by Trump and his associates has reached epic proportions. People appear on TV telling outright lies and clearly know they are. Trump himself will say absolutely anything to get out of trouble (usually self-created). I wonder what this is doing to the national (and global) psyche: is it creating disgust for lying or is it legitimizing lying as a tool of persuasion? What would Kant think? Can lying become so prevalent and so tolerated that it eclipses truth-telling? Will it all become a question of who can tell the best lies? My sense, though, is that the disgust at lying might well counterbalance the epidemic of it.