From Vance’s penchant to ‘create stories’ to Trump’s false claims, lies are brazenly flaunted as a tactic to win support
JD Vance was holding court on CNN’s State of the Union programme. “The American media totally ignored this stuff,” he complained last Sunday, “until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.”
But it wasn’t just a meme, objected interviewer Dana Bash. The Republican vice-presidential nominee gave a telling response: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”
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 – rumours that led to bomb threats and evacuations of schools and government buildings in Springfield.
But Vance’s willingness to “create stories” to grab attention before the November’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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Everyone is susceptible to social adaptation. Like how some people from poor backgrounds become classist once they’ve made it and have golf buddies to talk to about real estate. The real test of a person’s principles is if they’re willing to go against their peers opinions. It can be very isolating.
agreed and i’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.