From Vanceā€™s penchant to ā€˜create storiesā€™ to Trumpā€™s false claims, lies are brazenly flaunted as a tactic to win support

JD Vance was holding court on CNNā€™s State of the Union programme. ā€œThe American media totally ignored this stuff,ā€ he complained last Sunday, ā€œuntil Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.ā€

But it wasnā€™t just a meme, objected interviewer Dana Bash. The Republican vice-presidential nominee gave a telling response: ā€œIf I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then thatā€™s what Iā€™m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.ā€

If ever there was a case of saying the quiet part out loud, Vance had perfected the art. The cat memes he referred to were prompted by baseless rumours about legal Haitian immigrants in his home state of Ohio eating house pets ā€“ rumours that led to bomb threats and evacuations of schools and government buildings in Springfield.

But Vanceā€™s willingness to ā€œcreate storiesā€ to grab attention before the Novemberā€™s election hinted at a new frontier in post-truth America, where a lie is no longer slyly distributed but rather brazenly flaunted as a tactic to win political support and stir up social chaos.


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  • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    iā€™m convince that liberals and conservatives alike only go by what their in-group says and they become leftists and independents once they spend more than the average amount of effort to scratch beyond the surface.

    • goodthanks@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Everyone is susceptible to social adaptation. Like how some people from poor backgrounds become classist once theyā€™ve made it and have golf buddies to talk to about real estate. The real test of a personā€™s principles is if theyā€™re willing to go against their peers opinions. It can be very isolating.

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        agreed and iā€™d like to think that my autism induced isolation enables me to have these views as a sort of silver lining to being on the spectrum.