From Vanceās penchant to ācreate storiesā to Trumpās false claims, lies are brazenly flaunted as a tactic to win support
JD Vance was holding court on CNNās State of the Union programme. āThe American media totally ignored this stuff,ā he complained last Sunday, āuntil Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.ā
But it wasnāt just a meme, objected interviewer Dana Bash. The Republican vice-presidential nominee gave a telling response: āIf I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then thatās what Iām going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.ā
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 ā rumours that led to bomb threats and evacuations of schools and government buildings in Springfield.
But Vanceās willingness to ācreate storiesā to grab attention before the Novemberās 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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As soon as Bill Clinton took office the GOP was on him 24/7 with all kinds of ridiculous accusations. āTravelgateā was supposed to be an important problem, as was the death of Vince Foster. They actually shot themselves in the foot, because if they hadnāt been so blatant they might have managed to make the Monica scandal stick. But impeachment aside, I realize now that what they were doing was muddying the waters to make other people less likely to want to run, and to make regular voters sick of politics.
What was travelgate?
The funny thing is that the Clintons could have turned it around and accused the Reagan/Bush Sr. administrations of keeping a bunch of crooks on the payroll.