Mythologizing

One of the dead horses that people love to flog is the habit of the Trump Administration to make demonstrably false statements, a.k.a. lying. Pretty much from the outset, with the hullabaloo over how many people attended President Trump's inauguration, the administration has been telling one falsehood after another. Their critics have called them on each and every one of them; the Washington Post appears to have appointed themselves to the task of keeping a running tally. Administration supporters, on the other hand, have either ignored the false statements, gamely argued that they were, in fact, true or busied themselves with updating the catalog of Democratic sins (especially those of President Obama) in an attempt to keep the ledgers balanced.

As I see it, the Trump Administration is doing what most of the recent administrations before it (with the possible exception of the Carter Administration) have done, which is mythologizing. What sets the Trump Administration apart is the limited intended audience for said myth-making, and thus its greater willingness to employ lies when a workable truth is not at hand. They can get away with this because, for the most part, the President's supporters aren't doing anything with the information that the administration puts out that relies on it being accurate, so there are no real consequences. In other words, no-one's livelihood or investment portfolio depended on the administration accurately describing the size of the crowd at the inauguration. And it's a pretty safe bet that the same goes for any of the 10,000+ false or misleading statements that the Washington Post claims that the Presidemt has made since taking office.

Rather it's about buying into a myth; namely that the Trump Administration will "Make America great again" by returning the nation to a rightfully lofty position that it once held, but that was cravenly surrendered by treasonous Democratic politicians and the disloyal Liberal voters that support them; and in doing so, will reverse the declining fortunes of "real Americans" who have been targeted for economic displacement and poverty by the aforementioned Democratic politicians and Liberal voters for their refusal to go along with the Evil Socialist™ New World Order. As long as the Trump Administration is in the business of providing external validation for its supporters' view of themselves as unfairly victimized and of President Trump (and, by extension, the Trump Administration) as being targeted for supporting them, then the truth or falsehood of statements made doesn't matter, so long as it serves the myth. There's not much use in expecting anything different.