Masha Gessen explains Trump's use of the "power lie" - the deliberately unbelievable lie, designed to show you can get away with lying:
MG: "Lies can serve a number of functions. People lie to deflect, to avoid embarrassment or evade punishment by creating doubt, to escape confrontation or lighten the blow, to make themselves appear better, to get others to do or give something, and even to entertain.
However unskilled a person may be at lying, they usually hope that the lie will be convincing. Executives want shareholders to think that they have devised a foolproof path to profits. Defendants want juries to believe that there is a chance that someone else committed the crime.
People in relationships want their partners to think that they have never even considered cheating. Guests want the host to think that they like their fish overcooked. These lies can be annoying or amusing, but they are surmountable. They collapse in the face of facts.
The Trumpian lie is different. It is the power lie or the bully lie. It is the lie of the bigger kid who took your hat and is wearing it while denying that he took it. There is no defense against this lie because the point of the lie is to assert power, to show I can say what I want, when I want to.
The power lie conjures a different reality that demands that you choose between your experience and the bully's demands. Are you going to insist that you're wet from the rain or give in and say that the sun is shining?"
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John Carlos Baez
in reply to John Carlos Baez • • •Ira Glass discusses this with Masha Gessen here:
thisamericanlife.org/855/trans…
IG: "I have to say, since reading that passage in your book a few weeks ago, I feel like it's like you gave a name to something that I had known was there, but hadn't put a finger on what it was, like I hadn't named myself. This is a particular phenomenon, a particular way of lying that Donald Trump does.
And since I read that, I feel like I see this kind of power lie or bully lie from Trump and from his team come up in the news over and over. So, for example, Ukraine started the war with Russia; USAID sent $50 million worth of condoms to Hamas; China controls the Panama Canal."
MG: "Yeah, these are bully lies. And I'm seeing more and more of the impossibility of standing up to it because there are now a lot of these people, right? It's not just Trump. The first administration, it was Trump and his lies and a bunch of sycophants. Now they're kind of all, particularly T
... show moreIra Glass discusses this with Masha Gessen here:
thisamericanlife.org/855/trans…
IG: "I have to say, since reading that passage in your book a few weeks ago, I feel like it's like you gave a name to something that I had known was there, but hadn't put a finger on what it was, like I hadn't named myself. This is a particular phenomenon, a particular way of lying that Donald Trump does.
And since I read that, I feel like I see this kind of power lie or bully lie from Trump and from his team come up in the news over and over. So, for example, Ukraine started the war with Russia; USAID sent $50 million worth of condoms to Hamas; China controls the Panama Canal."
MG: "Yeah, these are bully lies. And I'm seeing more and more of the impossibility of standing up to it because there are now a lot of these people, right? It's not just Trump. The first administration, it was Trump and his lies and a bunch of sycophants. Now they're kind of all, particularly Trump and Musk, are just kind of running - one is constantly getting ahead of the other. "Federal employees have fortunes in the tens of millions with a salary of $180,000." "
IG: "That's something that Elon Musk claimed without presenting any evidence at all in an Oval Office press event, where he also suggested that Social Security may be sending out checks to people 150 years old - also without evidence, seems to be flatly untrue."
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855: That’s a Weird Thing to Lie About - This American Life
This American LifeJohn Carlos Baez
in reply to John Carlos Baez • • •IG: "Masha says these kind of lies, these bully lies, are different from the kind of lies that we've been used to in American politics for most of our history, where the two sides argue back and forth, present evidence, try to convince each other- or try to convince voters, at least.
The bully lie is different. It doesn't try to convince you. It doesn't present evidence. It just tells you to pick a side. So when the president said that diversity programs caused the plane crash over the Potomac, when he called the president of Ukraine a dictator without elections, he didn't lay out a set of facts to make his case. He wasn't interested in rebuttal.
When he does this kind of thing, Masha writes, he's "asserting control over reality itself" and splitting the country into those who agree to live in his reality and those who resist and become his enemies by insisting on facts."
"The reason Masha is so aware of what that feels like is that they grew up in Russia, left, came back, then fled when it became impossible for them to keep living there under Vladimir Putin. Mas
... show moreIG: "Masha says these kind of lies, these bully lies, are different from the kind of lies that we've been used to in American politics for most of our history, where the two sides argue back and forth, present evidence, try to convince each other- or try to convince voters, at least.
The bully lie is different. It doesn't try to convince you. It doesn't present evidence. It just tells you to pick a side. So when the president said that diversity programs caused the plane crash over the Potomac, when he called the president of Ukraine a dictator without elections, he didn't lay out a set of facts to make his case. He wasn't interested in rebuttal.
When he does this kind of thing, Masha writes, he's "asserting control over reality itself" and splitting the country into those who agree to live in his reality and those who resist and become his enemies by insisting on facts."
"The reason Masha is so aware of what that feels like is that they grew up in Russia, left, came back, then fled when it became impossible for them to keep living there under Vladimir Putin. Masha says the bully lie is significant because it's not a traditional part of American politics, but it is a very standard tactic of authoritarian leaders around the world and in history."
"Life under autocracy can be terrifying, as it already is in the United States for immigrants and trans people. But those of us with experience can tell you, most of the time, for most people, it's not frightening. It is stultifying. It's boring. It feels like trying to see and breathe underwater because you're submerged in bad ideas, being discussed badly, being reflected in bad journalism, and eventually, in bad literature and bad movies."
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