Don't Shred Your Credibility for Your Tribe

[EasyAce]

Partisans will always sacrifice their integrity if it helps the ‘good guys’ win.
By David French
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444142/partisan-politics-truth-lies-trump-inauguration-sean-spicer-media

This weekend witnessed perhaps the dumbest political debate I’ve ever seen. It started with an act of bad-faith
media trolling. Reporters noticed that Trump’s inauguration crowd was much smaller than one for Obama’s historically
huge first inaugural and began tweeting pictures like this:

PBS NewsHour ‏@NewsHour  Jan 20

@NewsHour For reference - 2017 photo of President Trump's inauguration taken at 11:49am,
approx 10 mins before he took the Oath of Office.

The pictures filled Twitter, leaked into longer news stories, and became something like a liberal security blanket on a tough
day. They wrapped themselves in memories of Obama’s glory to ease their pain.

But who cares, really? Obama was the first black president. Washington is a deep-blue city. Of course he was going to have
a huge crowd at his inaugural. Democrats generally pull the bigger crowds, especially when they end eight or more years
of Republican rule. Given D.C.’s politics, holding a GOP inauguration there is comparable to the Chicago Cubs trying to hold
their victory parade in downtown Cleveland.

By now, however, we all know that Trump will respond to every attack, so he sent Sean Spicer out into the press room, where
Spicer proceeded to utter a string of demonstrably false statements. On Day One in office. In a short press conference at which
he refused to take questions, Spicer made false claims about crowd size, grass coverings, subway use, and security measures.
Kellyanne Conway then defended Spicer, using an instantly unfortunate (and memorable) phrase, calling his claims “alternative
facts.”

The press was apoplectic. They were appalled that a press secretary would stand in front of the White House press corps and
“lie.” He violated “norms.” His actions constituted a “breach of trust.” And these critiques were right. The entire press conference
was ridiculous. It’s possible to defend against silly media attacks without lying. Spicer can do better, and he did do better in a
generally uneventful press conference Monday afternoon.

But here’s another thing that’s also true: Many of the same people who were appalled at Sean Spicer were at the same time
trumpeting the allegedly “scandal-free” Obama administration, a presidency that featured “If you like your health-care plan
you can keep it,” a scheme targeting tea-party groups that itself rested on an avalanche of lies and deceptions, serial lies
about Benghazi, and deliberate lies to sell the Iran deal to a skeptical public. And that’s hardly a complete list.

While there were certainly good reporters who did their best to hold the administration to account, outside conservative media
there was nothing like the breathless, apocalyptic tweeting, writing, and speaking you see today. The cycle is so familiar, and
the cynicism is breathtaking. In the Bush years, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. When Obama was president, dissent
became “obstructionism.” Now that Trump is president, obstructionism is romanticized as the “resistance.”

There are those who wave away callbacks to Obama-administration lies and media kid-glove treatments as “what-about-ism.”
In other words, they say it’s no answer to our critiques of Trump’s misdeeds to note that other people have lied at other times.
In a narrow sense, they’re correct. One administration’s lies don’t justify the next administration’s falsehoods.

The larger truth, however, is that those with no credibility make poor critics. Given the recent past, media outrage at Spicer’s
press conference starts to seem less like a principled stand for the truth than an attempt to manufacture outrage. Thus, we
see the wearying pattern of the modern Trump media debate. The media call out his falsehoods and decry the erosion of
norms. His defenders call out media hypocrisy but then are themselves often incapable of telling the truth. After all, to speak
the truth means “giving in.” It means “not fighting.”

Our politics is devolving into the pathetic spectacle of liars indignantly calling out liars for lying. Rule-breakers are outraged
that other rule-breakers break rules. Norms that could be violated with impunity for “social justice” can’t be violated for
“nationalism.” We stick with our tribe, through thick and thin — through truth and lies.

This conduct has a high cost. It leaves the public with no one to trust. For several weeks I’ve been one of many voices calling
for an independent, bipartisan investigation into the totality of Russian efforts to influence the American presidential election.
In response, my friend Glenn Reynolds raised a fair question: “Who do you trust to investigate? The news media? The national
security bureaucracy? Congress? All of them have gone out of their way to prove themselves untrustworthy.”

Increasingly, we are reaching a point where we can “trust” political actors (and, make no mistake, the press is a political actor)
only to be partisan. And to be partisan means trying to win every encounter, every news cycle, and every argument. Truth be
damned. Fairness be damned. Law be damned. Partisans determine the “rules” only after they determine the desired outcome
and then apply those rules if and only if they help the “good guys” win.

This weekend, I overheard a small group of Republicans trying to reassure themselves after Spicer’s press conference. “Yes,
it was terrible,” one said, “but at least we’ve got Mattis and DeVos, so on balance we’re still ahead.” Here’s the thing — it’s
possible (and it’s not asking too much) to have the truth and to have General Mattis at the Pentagon and Betsy DeVos in the
Department of Education. It’s possible to defend a man and a movement without lying. And it’s possible to refuse to lie for
a man or for a movement.

Until a critical mass of the public reaches that rather simple cultural and moral understanding, expect more of the same.
Partisans will win some. They’ll lose some. But they’ll always sacrifice their integrity when the chips are down.

— David French is a staff writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and an attorney.

[thackney]

People on welfare and not with a time consuming job tend to support democrats.

They are more free to show up during the work day.

[EasyAce]

People on welfare and not with a time consuming job tend to support democrats.

They are more free to show up during the work day.

True enough, but I think even Bill Clinton didn't draw the inaugural crowd Barack Obama did. Democrat or not,
Obama's was a historic inaugural.

[Wingnut]

I need a tribe.  I don't think I have one? 

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

People on welfare and not with a time consuming job tend to support democrats.

They are more free to show up during the work day.

So why didn't Dummy Trump and Spicer and Conway and the rest of the traveling clown show make that claim? Why utter lies?

[skeeter]

True enough, but I think even Bill Clinton didn't draw the inaugural crowd Barack Obama did. Democrat or not,
Obama's was a historic inaugural.

Also, considering DC's primary demographic several hundred thousand of the attendees to Obama's inauguration probably walked from their homes to the event.

I doubt they were similarly motivated to walk to Trump's.

[Idaho_Cowboy]

I need a tribe.  I don't think I have one?

Ugg you run-um gauntlet we make you honorary chief. Have big party. Party is BYFW (Bring your own Fire Water)

[geronl]

People on welfare and not with a time consuming job tend to support democrats.

They are more free to show up during the work day.

People on welfare can't afford trips to DC and hotel rooms

[Wingnut]

Ugg you run-um gauntlet we make you honorary chief. Have big party. Party is BYFW (Bring your own Fire Water)

Teepee never empty when frost on nose of buffalo.

[goatprairie]

The best reply to liberal WH reporters from Spicer and others when they, the reporters, jump up and down screaming about ...uh...inaccuracies concerning His Orangeness's utterances is just to respond....."hmmmm.....how about that.....next question."
Arguing about the crowd size is moronic.