I'm not sure how you can come away from any observation of politics and not conclude that lying is absolutely rampant. Are there politicians who are relatively honest? Sure, but while they may have loyal grass-roots support, they tend not to be the most successful and they are most definitely in the minority.
Most any person with a sense of political history could provide a litany of examples just for recent politicians, not to mention past eras.
I don't think the main difference here is Trump's ability to lie, though he does have an impetuous manner of speaking that makes it hard to sustain elaborate lies. I think the main difference is the willingness (or lack thereof) of people in respectable positions to cover for his lying, because he is not considered respectable.
> lying is absolutely rampant. Are there politicians who are relatively honest? Sure, but while they may have loyal grass-roots support, they tend not to be the most successful and they are most definitely in the minority.
That actually matches my default belief pretty well, FWIW, but I don't have a lot of evidence for it. Yes, there are lots of news stories about lying/corrupt politicians, but without the greater context how can you tell the prevalence? It's like a negative survivorship bias, we only hear about the scandals.
> I think the main difference is the willingness (or lack thereof) of people in respectable positions to cover for his lying, because he is not considered respectable.
Yeah, I found that sad and disgusting.
My personal problem is, is this just what humans are? Can we do better? Should we "Take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."?
I try to remind myself that we are in fact getting better, we have the tools to fix our problems, and there's reason to hope. Yay us!
> but while they may have loyal grass-roots support, they tend not to be the most successful and they are most definitely in the minority
Because the electorate want that. If they rewarded honest people we'd have more successful honest politicians. In the end too many people want easy solutions, which often don't exist.
Whataboutism isn't going to win any arguments when comparing trump's lies to other politicians. The difference in scale is many orders of magnitude different.
Most any person with a sense of political history could provide a litany of examples just for recent politicians, not to mention past eras.
I don't think the main difference here is Trump's ability to lie, though he does have an impetuous manner of speaking that makes it hard to sustain elaborate lies. I think the main difference is the willingness (or lack thereof) of people in respectable positions to cover for his lying, because he is not considered respectable.