The President’s Habit of Lying Isn’t Sustainable

It should be no secret by now that our President has a tenuous, at best, relationship with the truth. From his claim early on in the campaign that he saw thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey following the terror attacks on 9/11 to his post-election rationalization for losing the popular vote that millions of illegal ballots were cast, Trump has exhibited a stubborn tendency to invent whatever information is necessary to support his arguments.

While the Trump Administration’s disregard for the slightest bit of “truthiness” was almost amusing when Press Secretary Sean Spicer ranted about crowd sizes during his first appearance behind the podium and befuddled news organizations were left consulting crowd scientists, there is a genuine cause for concern about where this trend of never ending lies is actually headed. Not long after Kellyanne Conway coined the term ‘alternative facts’ while defending Spicer’s lies, sales of George Orwell’s prescient novel 1984 skyrocketed — for good reason.

In Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future an authoritarian military state maintains a vice-grip of loyalty around its citizens by completely disregarding their civil liberties and establishing the state as the sole arbiter of truth. In this world there is no objective truth to be found — rather, the government informs citizens of the nature of their reality. Suddenly, it’s not hard to see why Kellyanne’s comments inspired so many to buy the novel, or why the more paranoid among us likely read it while frantically searching for reasons to believe that our own nation isn’t on the path to fulfilling Orwell’s nightmares.

Giving Trump the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he doesn’t actually intend to dissolve democracy in the U.S. and abandon our constitution, the logical end results of his inability to accept reality are still limited. When he claimed recently that murder rates are at an all time high despite the opposite being true, whether he realized it or not the President begun to deal in a new level of lies. His falsehoods have evolved beyond stories of people celebrating in the streets, attending an inauguration, or even casting votes — they’re about people’s lives now. Trump’s lies have quite literally become a matter of life and death.

Again, whether he even believes the truth or not being irrelevant, Trump’s lies can inevitably only lead to two possible outcomes. Either he will establish himself as an arbiter of reality like Big Brother, or he will implode in a magnificent display of self-destruction like Nixon. The former outcome would require some crucial developments to take place first, primarily a dramatic increase in the President’s popularity. Additionally, public trust in existing media, scientific, financial, and government institutions would have to erode even further than it has to precipitate such a dramatic paradigm shift in our national consciousness.

Given the seeming unlikelihood that President Trump will become the most trusted source of information in the U.S. anytime soon, the lingering question remains as to what the long term effects of his lying-spree through our public sphere will be. It’s clear that he has already established himself as infallible to a not-insignificant portion of our population, and their willingness to throw unconditional support behind him will still matter even if the President is impeached or loses in four years. The division Trump has perpetuated in our politics and the disillusionment he’s sown in our institutions may turn out to be trends that have pre-dated and will ultimately outlast his political career. Thus, we must consider whether Trump’s lying is the problem itself or rather a symptom of a deeper societal failure — the cultivation of an electorate who only wants to be told what they want to hear.