I’d say it’s even worse than that. Part of the culture on the right is that "yeah, it’s a lie but that’s fine. Even proving they lie beyond a shadow of a doubt doesn’t dissuade the core, because they have been conditioned to take lies in stride, so long as it agrees with them.
You have Vance going on and saying the lies are necessary because unless they lie about Haitians and paint them as barbaric savages then people will fair to recognize them as the barbaric savages that everyone knows “those people” really are, even if the facts don’t support that. That maybe they can’t accurately state how they are savages or they can’t support it, it “sounds right” and that’s good enough because surely they are up to something like that, because they are “those people”.
You have people in their camp like Scott Adams spinning things as “directionally true”, again, they may not be actually true, but common sense tells everyone Haitians are bad people, so it’s good enough.
Speaking of common sense, Vance said during the debate that experts are explicitly people to disregard and to follow that “common sense”. Expertise, research, honoring the facts, all these are bad things because “common sense” knows better (so long as “common sense” agrees with whatever Trump camp feels, if your “common sense” disagrees, well then you don’t have common sense or you are somehow evil).
Like the one “outright lie” they caught Walz in, that 35 years ago he was in Hong Kong in August instead of June, Walz seemed genuinely ashamed about that pretty mild scenario. Meanwhile Vance just effortlessly carries on without a hint of caring about being called out on anything.
I’d say it’s even worse than that. Part of the culture on the right is that "yeah, it’s a lie but that’s fine. Even proving they lie beyond a shadow of a doubt doesn’t dissuade the core, because they have been conditioned to take lies in stride, so long as it agrees with them.
You have Vance going on and saying the lies are necessary because unless they lie about Haitians and paint them as barbaric savages then people will fair to recognize them as the barbaric savages that everyone knows “those people” really are, even if the facts don’t support that. That maybe they can’t accurately state how they are savages or they can’t support it, it “sounds right” and that’s good enough because surely they are up to something like that, because they are “those people”.
You have people in their camp like Scott Adams spinning things as “directionally true”, again, they may not be actually true, but common sense tells everyone Haitians are bad people, so it’s good enough.
Speaking of common sense, Vance said during the debate that experts are explicitly people to disregard and to follow that “common sense”. Expertise, research, honoring the facts, all these are bad things because “common sense” knows better (so long as “common sense” agrees with whatever Trump camp feels, if your “common sense” disagrees, well then you don’t have common sense or you are somehow evil).
Like the one “outright lie” they caught Walz in, that 35 years ago he was in Hong Kong in August instead of June, Walz seemed genuinely ashamed about that pretty mild scenario. Meanwhile Vance just effortlessly carries on without a hint of caring about being called out on anything.