Limited Interest

I was looking at a headline that showed the latest count of "false or misleading claims made by President Trump," and I found myself wondering: Who cares? Not in the sense that this something that people really don't care about, but in the literal sense. Of the people who encounter the statements the President Trump makes, which of them care whether or not they are factually accurate?

We live in a society that's built, in large part, on lying. Whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing depends mostly on our understanding of the context surrounding a lie. Most of the people who seem to have difficulty with President Trump and his relationship (or lack thereof) with what they consider the truth tend to view him as someone who deceives others for his own benefit, or for the benefit of other people who deserve no such benefits. If, on the other hand, people don't care about the delta between presidential statements and the truth, they view it as being about making a greater point, or just unimportant.

And this, overall, seems to be a partisan viewpoint. Which is unsurprising. Partisans tend to have strong views about the world, and this creates a filter for information that allows two people to take the same set of information about the world and come to wildly different conclusions about what is happening and what should happen next.

The conclusion that I came to is that the people who care about the truth or falsity of President Trump's statements are mainly people who are virtue signalling; where "virtue" is defined as opposition to the President, his policies and, to a lesser extent (perhaps), his supporters. And that's unfortunate in that it perpetuates the "rooting for the other guy to fail" mentality that has lead the country to this point. But it's also perfectly understandable. No-one wants to be a chump, and giving the other side the benefit of the doubt has become a sure-fire way to be seen as one.