April 2, 2017

Donald Trump

Blue Army: Persons of Interest


Men lie when they think to profit by deception, and tell the truth for the same reason — to get something they want …
It is only two different roads to the same goal.


Herodotus (c484 – c425 BCE), The Histories, Book 3, 440 BCE.


Truth isn't truth.

Rudy Giuliani (1944), NBC News, August 2018.


Truth for us nowadays is not what is, but what others can be brought to accept …
[Dissimulation has become] one of the most striking characteristics of our age. …
Our understanding is conducted solely by means of the word: anyone who falsifies it betrays public society.
It is the only tool by which we communicate our wishes and our thoughts; it is our soul's interpreter: if we lack that, we can no longer hold together; we can no longer know each other.
When words deceive us, it breaks all intercourse and loosens the bonds of our polity.


Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 92), On giving the lie, Essais, Chapter 18, Book II, 1580.


Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief … that mental lying has produced in society.
When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.


Tom Paine (1737 – 1809), The Age of Reason, 1794-1807.


We live in a time when:
  • political passions run high,
  • channels of free expression are dwindling, and
  • organised lying exists on a scale never before known.
George Orwell (1903 – 50), New Statesman and Nation, 9 January 1943.


Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

Kenneth Galbraith (1908 – 2006)


Elect a clown
Expect a circus


peaceandlonglife


I Am Your Voice

Populist:
An adherent of a political party claiming to support the interests of ordinary people.


— The Oxford Reference Dictionary, Joyce Hawkins, Editor, 1986.

Joseph Pavlic:
We have people who are coming into this country who are trying to hurt us, and I think that we need to be protected. …
When he says "America First" and he sits there, and he talks about you:
This is for you!
— I really believe that. …

Tammy Pavlic:
… I think it's important that the [Mexican border] wall is built.
For the greater good, you've got to make sacrifices. …

I think he gets us. …
He isn't a politician.
As rich as the man is, he can relate to the regular person.
[We need] more people like him.
(Liz Garbus, American Carnage, The Fourth Estate: The NY Times and Trump, Episode 3, 2018)