Paul Krugman: Goodbye Spin, Hello Raw Dishonesty [feedly]

Paul Krugman: Goodbye Spin, Hello Raw Dishonesty
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/03/paul-krugman-goodbye-spin-hello-raw-dishonesty.html

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Who'll stop the rain?:

Goodbye Spin, Hello Raw Dishonesty, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: The latest big buzz is about Jeff Sessions, the attorney general. It turns out that he lied during his confirmation hearings, denying that he had met with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. In fact, he met twice with the Russian ambassador, who is widely reported to also be a key spymaster. ...

At this point it's easier to list the Trump officials who haven't been caught lying under oath than those who have. This is not an accident.

Critics ... used to complain, with justification, about politicians' addiction to spin —...presenting their actions in a much better light than they deserved. But all indications are that the age of spin is over. It has been replaced by an era of raw, shameless dishonesty.

In part, of course, the pervasiveness of lies reflects the character of the man at the top: No president, or for that matter major U.S. political figure of any kind, has ever lied as freely and frequently as Donald Trump. ...

And the question is, who's going to stop him?

The moral vacuity of Republicans in Congress, and the unlikelihood that they'll act as any check on the president, becomes clearer with each passing day. Even the real possibility that we're facing subversion by agents of a foreign power, and that top officials are part of the story, doesn't seem to faze them as long as they can get tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor.

Meanwhile, Republican ... voters, who are the real arbiters when polarized and/or gerrymandered districts make the general election irrelevant for many politicians, live in a Fox News bubble...

And what about the Fourth Estate? Will it let us down, too?

To be fair, the first weeks of the Trump administration have in important ways been glory days for journalism; one must honor the ... reporters who have been ferreting out the secrets this authoritarian-minded clique is so determined to keep.

But then you watch something like the way much of the news media responded to Mr. Trump's congressional address, and you feel despair. It was a speech filled with falsehoods and vile policy proposals, but read calmly off the teleprompter — and suddenly everyone was declaring the liar in chief "presidential."

The point is that if that's all it takes to exonerate the most dishonest man ever to hold high office in America, we're doomed. Let's hope it doesn't happen again.