Twitteretter

I am trying to find the right nouns to describe my reaction when hearing those who abetted and supported Donald Trump for the last four years, and even for the two months following his electoral defeat, expressing shock and bemusement at the events at the Capitol a few days ago. It is not easy. Trump has been warning us that he was going to do just this for months. Social media are full of threads among his support base organising and threatening just this, if not worse. Nothing we have seen in the last few days came unannounced, on the contrary, it was just a partial realisation of ongoing threats. In the aftermath, many politicians and commentators are trying to distance themselves from the events, relinquish their responsibility, claiming they did not know it would come to this. In fact, it would be surprising if anything else had happened. We must urgently question how fit to lead a nation are those who wilfully ignore an obvious reality to fit facts to their wishes and biases ...

I posted previously on Trump’s staggering amount of lies during his presidency. The same could be said about Boris Johnson’s whole career, from his Brussels correspondent times, the halcyon days of straight bananas, short coffins and such outlandish flights of fancy, eagerly printed by his employers with complete disregard for truth. These are careers built on lies, subterfuge and cons, without political penalty. Electorates, at least a sufficient percentage of them, choose to believe them. This is because these characters have mastered the art of lying, consisting, from my observation, of two main elements. First, complete sincerity. The consummate liar convinces himself of the truth of his lie, in true Raspe’s Baron Munchausen fashion. Armed with that conviction, they lead others on (the preposition is critical here, lead on, not lead). Secondly, the lies must be outrageous and outrageously uttered, so that audiences believe nobody would make up such a thing, which must make it true ...

‘Do as I do, not as I say’ is a commonly used adage, speaking to the sense in following what people do, not their claims. I’ve observed lately, in politics, the opposite phenomenon. I am having conversations with otherwise theoretically intelligent people who seem to support politicians on the basis of what they say, not what they do, in a kind of political ‘I love it when you talk tough’. Take Donald Trump’s protestations on his tough stance on China and its CCP, talking up his trade war even though during his presidency the China-US payment imbalance has widened. Or Priti Patel’s tough talk on human trafficking, which has thrived in the over ten years her party has been in power. Failing to deliver on one’s words is not new in politics. What may be new is voters accepting it, even enthusiastically embracing it, because, despite all evidence, which is actually readily available, they rather listen to the words and follow the liars on a sado masochistic trip down Virtual Alley  Len...