- Joined
- Jun 18, 2018
- Messages
- 81,326
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- Political Leaning
- Progressive
"...with regard to political lying, is to focus on the decision to lie — to affirmatively act to mislead the public about a genuine crisis. Politics is not the place for perfect honesty, but some measure of truth telling is necessary to the project of collective self-government. It is incumbent on political leaders, specifically, to strive for some correspondence to reality when they make their case to the public. They set the terms of political discourse and contestation. They define the boundaries of what’s fair and what’s foul. And their words and actions affect the public at large. Ordinary people take cues from leaders when they try to decide what it means, for themselves, to be political.
When political leaders lie with abandon — when they do so flagrantly with no other concern than their most narrow interest or when they do so to attack innocent people in the service of demagoguery — they are telling their supporters that this is what it means to engage in political life. They are trying to build a culture of dishonesty that erodes trust and makes collective action all the more difficult. They are weakening the values and the virtues that facilitate republican self-government.
Democracy is a discipline. It is a habit. It must be cultivated so that we can learn to act democratically — so that it becomes a part of who we are. Part of the discipline of democracy is meeting others as equals, fellow citizens with whom you can reason and deliberate.
To lie without shame about everything — even something as dire as a natural disaster — is to show contempt for the idea that you can reason with or persuade another person. It is to attempt to shape their reality so that they can’t really disagree. It is to demand obedience to a narrative. It is to cultivate the habits of autocracy."
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When political leaders lie with abandon — when they do so flagrantly with no other concern than their most narrow interest or when they do so to attack innocent people in the service of demagoguery — they are telling their supporters that this is what it means to engage in political life. They are trying to build a culture of dishonesty that erodes trust and makes collective action all the more difficult. They are weakening the values and the virtues that facilitate republican self-government.
Democracy is a discipline. It is a habit. It must be cultivated so that we can learn to act democratically — so that it becomes a part of who we are. Part of the discipline of democracy is meeting others as equals, fellow citizens with whom you can reason and deliberate.
To lie without shame about everything — even something as dire as a natural disaster — is to show contempt for the idea that you can reason with or persuade another person. It is to attempt to shape their reality so that they can’t really disagree. It is to demand obedience to a narrative. It is to cultivate the habits of autocracy."
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