Lying liars lie habitually

Kevin Williamson makes the point in National Review that lying liars lie habitually. He is referring to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Does Hillary owe Trump and the nation an apology for falsely claiming that ISIS is using Donald Trump's statements as recruitment tools. Yes!

...Never mind what this says about Herself’s fitness for the presidency: We all know that she is morally, ethically, and intellectually unfit for the job. She’s unfit to manage a Walmart in Muleshoe, Texas. She’s unfit to have a route delivering the Buck County Courier Times. From cattle futures to bimbo eruptions to Internet auteurs inspiring terror attacks in Benghazi, anybody who is paying any attention understands that Herself’s relationship with the truth is a lot like her relationship with the Big Creep: all politics, a marriage of convenience.

This isn’t about Herself. This is about democracy.

It used to fall upon the news media to police this sort of thing, but they are today utterly incapable of doing so. So-called fact-checking sites such as PolitiFact are nests of intellectually dishonest partisan hackery, and even journalists who want to do the right thing have a very difficult time doing so in a world of infinite media choices. Cognitive bias is very powerful: When people have decided on a certain model of how the world is, they tend to take to heart stories that reinforce that view and to discount those that challenge it. That is one of the reasons why the Washington Post is retiring its “What Was Fake?” column dedicated to exposing popular hoaxes. You cannot reach the unreachable or educate the ineducable, especially those who do not want to be educated.

Unfortunately, that leaves those of us who want to see an honest and rigorous debate about public affairs largely dependent upon the moral character of politicians and other people in public life. It’s not working out too well: The reality of economic life in the early 21st century is incomprehensibly complex, and the real-world policy factors involved are myriad. But in the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders, this all comes down to two words: “rigged economy.” That isn’t an oversimplification — it’s a lie, and Sanders knows better. But he also knows that this stuff gets real hairy real quick — having seen the man in action, I very much doubt that he could explain to any informed person’s satisfaction what a derivative is or how a synthetic CDO comes into the world. His enthusiasts couldn’t, either. But it’s easier to traffic in conspiracy theory — which is what “rigged economy” is — than to deal with reality.

...If we want to have authentic democracy, then we have to insist that people in public life be truthful about the events and personalities of the real world. We have to tell the truth about the people who are running for president. We also have to tell the truth about bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, Omar Abdel-Rahman, Timothy McVeigh, O. J. Simpson — and even Donald Trump.

Of course Mrs. Clinton owes Trump an apology. She owes the rest of the country an apology, too.

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