26 May 2018

The Rabbit Hole

Paul Waldman at The Washington Post wrote a great piece yesterday (link here) with the title "Time to stop chasing Trump’s lies down the rabbit hole."

It is no secret that Trump uses bold-faced lies to try and distract attention from something he's done wrong or some controversy in which he has become ensnared.

Yet the media reports on his lies as if they are presidential statements that deserve serious reportage and analysis.

Trump's behavior in the last week or so, with an ongoing stream of lies about an imaginary conspiracy inside the FBI to get him, is the latest and possibly loudest example.

The reasons he's doing this are obvious. When he shamelessly lies in an outrageous way, the media will cover that, and the resulting controversy often overshadows and deflects attention away from the real issue.

So the real issue of late is the fact that more and more of Trump's people are being indicted and more criminality is being exposed. In a desperate attempt to divert attention and to speak directly to his die-hard supporters, Trump builds a house of lies and keeps nailing on more lies.

One is reminded here of Occam's Razor, a philosophical principle. It holds that the simpliest explanation for something is often the correct one.

So if people keep being indicted and more and more crimes are revealed, does this mean it's (1) true or (2) all part of an elaborate conspiracy to fabricate evidence and charges in order to frame innocent people?

Occam's Razor provides the answer: Trump and his administration are corrupt and there is no complex conspiracy. The "explanation" is nothing more than a pack of lies.

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