I doubt calling President Trump a liar is as effective as calling him an "untruth teller" or perhaps a "fake-truth teller". I am probably wrong but maybe not.
I may not be doing it correctly but it is my feeble attempt to operationalize discoveries of two Nobel winners about us humans as "choice/decision makers", Thaler and Kahneman, and another man, George Lakoff.
Did you ever wonder how someone makes up their mind? Others and George Lakoff
Did you ever wonder how someone makes up their mind? How they then become so resolute in what they "believe" to be the real truth or fact?
Over the past several years, especially since Scott Walker was elected governor of our state, I have been among the wandering wonderers. Pragmatically people had beliefs, that although I felt were wrong, they held those beliefs nonetheless. How does one go about affecting beliefs or changing a person's mind let alone a group? So I kept the question in my mind and passively went about creating a record, in a blog, collecting facts over time to see if I could find "facts" that changed my mind or to say more accurately, refined my thoughts.
Along the way I collected so many stories from different people and disciplines that were independently interesting. As I collected those stories it seemed they were only related to some small part of my question.
Many things were mulled over and then I encountered the following which I posted in January, 2012. My interest stemmed from curiosity about "Behavioral Economics". The use of the word "moral" in the title also intrigued me since the politics of many to the right seem to believe they have "a better moral compass" than others. (see the link for the full context)
Give credit to Kahneman, Thaler, Lakoff and I would add Dan Ariely and E.O. Wilson.
It seems we humans have a strong sense of "fairness" and we will penalize those that are "unfair". We won't buy a needed umbrella in a rain storm if the merchant has jacked up the price.
So the premise of calling out the behavior is more important than calling out the act. President Trump is being "unfair". He has so many advantages: command the world's attention, nuclear arsenal, executive orders, power of appointment, twitter, an army of "untruth tellers". President Trump is doing this himself - he is identifying "the media" as "unfair".
He is not being fair and portraying himself as the victim (rather viciously). The media needs to emphasize this politely and perhaps turn the "fake-news" label into the label of being the "underdog" versus President Trump.
As an example of the narrative, "I know my voice won't be heard over the commander-in-chief''s voice but this is so unfair and untruthful."
It's worth a try ... isn't it? I gather from what I have read that the phrase "predictably irrational" is an apt description of President Trump and every other human being. He is taking severe advantage of our human foible to demonstrate how unfairly he is being treated and shouting it from the rooftops. None of us can replicate his "power" but President Trump is using it radically to disparage people who are a lot smaller than him who have none of his power.
Thaler studies describes this as predictably irrational (the phrase may actually originate with Dan Ariely) ... almost seems like an oxymoron.
... Lakoff gave a talk recently at the Center for Right-Wing Studies and pointed out that students who become Democratic operatives tend to study political studies and statistics and demographics in college. “Students who lean Republican study marketing. “And that’s his point,” Rosenthal said. “It’s a very different way of thinking.”We need to remember where President Trump consciously learned the skill he amplifies and exemplifies.
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