[Leonidas]

Originally Posted by job

Awwww, how cute...everybody getting indignant over the fact that a politician twisted the truth.
You could always just hop back on your unicorns and go back to Rainbowland if it upsets you too much.

The cynicism you express and probably imagine to be some sort of hard-headed realist position is evidence that you are too susceptible to the planned manipulation by politicians who use the tactic of the constant and big lie to lower our expectations for appraising their behavior. Cynicism is just a form of acceptance and resignation, it's not realism.

Those of us who point out lies, and analyze the purposes of lies, are not soft-headed disappointed polyannas who didn't expect to have to deal with this crap. We're dealing with it by calling it what it is and discussing what a more truthful reality would look like. We do this because lies are manipulations and we don't like being, or posturing as, some lazy and passive tool.

Clearly one of the larger purposes behind lying by public figures is to desensitize us to lying and erode our capacity to tell when it's happening and when it's not. ("What's the difference, they're all lying all the time.") That takes people out of the process and reduces the number of potential critical thinkers. It spreads stupefaction in a world that desperately needs more discerning and smart people.

The purpose of a lie is to move people to believe things on the basis of false claims and assertions. A calculated lie is the ultimate act of disrespect for others because it is an attempt to manipulate their perception of reality in an effort to take away the conditions of evidence and reason that allow true freedom of choice. That's the primary reason that lying to others, and being lied to by others, is immoral and unacceptable.

I think you and anybody else here who fancies him or her self too clever to be sucked in to caring about politics needs to get in to reasoning and arguing instead.