LYING IS BAD: 5 Reasons You Shouldn't Defend Trump's Lies Just Because You Like The Outcome

[Cripplecreek]

So I see Trumpers are now bragging about their lack of ethics yet they'll squeal like pigs if someone points them out for the degenerates they are.

Progressive Walter Lippman was clearly talking about them and their kind.

Democratic politicians rarely feel they can afford the luxury of telling the whole truth to the people. And since not telling it, though prudent, is uncomfortable, they find it easier if they themselves do not have to hear too often too much of the sour truth. The men under them who report and collect the news come to realize in their turn that it is safer to be wrong before it has become fashionable to be right.

[Victoria33]

So I see Trumpers are now bragging about their lack of ethics yet they'll squeal like pigs if someone points them out for the degenerates they are.

@Cripplecreek

Until I got out in the adult world, I didn't know people lied.  I am now very old, likely the oldest person on this forum and Trump is the worst liar I have ever witnessed. 

[EasyAce]

@Cripplecreek

Until I got out in the adult world, I didn't know people lied.  I am now very old, likely the oldest person on this forum and Trump is the worst liar I have ever witnessed.

Funny, but you don't seem old. :)

[jpsb]

@TomSea

100% untrue.  Red State praises and defends Trump when suitable, and criticizes him when warranted.  The same is true of Ben Shapiro; I see it every day on his Twitter timeline.

I suspect you want zero criticism and unqualified praise.  Since this isn't North Korea, that isn't about to happen.

NeverTrumpers (Red State, Ben Shapiro, National Review, George Will, etc) have zero credibility and nothing to add to any conversation concerning Trump or Trumps' policies. NeverTrumpers have made themselves irrelevant.

[Victoria33]

Funny, but you don't seem old. :)

@EasyAce
@Quix

My brain and body are in good shape so far.  I never stop learning, studying, writing.  Years have given me experience others have not had.  I lived in an earlier United States that was so different than it is now. 

[INVAR]

NeverTrumpers (Red State, Ben Shapiro, National Review, George Will, etc) have zero credibility and nothing to add to any conversation concerning Trump or Trumps' policies. NeverTrumpers have made themselves irrelevant.

Likewise, I'm expecting Trumpers to make Constitutional Conservatism irrelevant.

Instead, we shall have Trumpism, in whatever Nationalist/Populist/Socialist/Nationalist/Humanist/Christianist/Unionist and Republican shape that takes, by whatever measure or means Trump decides to take it.

There's much to like in the initiatives in these first 5 days - but there are the Courts, Congress and Trump's ego-centric vindictiveness that we have 4 more years to experience.

[Cripplecreek]

@Cripplecreek

Until I got out in the adult world, I didn't know people lied.  I am now very old, likely the oldest person on this forum and Trump is the worst liar I have ever witnessed.

@Victoria33

Generally teen motherhood is frowned upon for good reason but as the son of a 16 year old mother I did find the advantage in the fact that I had many years with my great grandmother who was truly my ethical and moral guiding light.  Hardly a day passed for the first 33 years of my life that we didn't talk because I always lived within a few hundred yards of her.

She wasn't a particularly religious person but every day brought a new lesson about ethics, morality, charity, and practical things like the value of hard work. When I was 8 or 9 years old she paid me a dollar to shovel the snow off her sidewalk. By the time I was 30 years old she was still paying me the dollar and I was shoveling the sidewalks of 3 of her widowed neighbors as well.

[Victoria33]

@Victoria33

Generally teen motherhood is frowned upon for good reason but as the son of a 16 year old mother I did find the advantage in the fact that I had many years with my great grandmother who was truly my ethical and moral guiding light.  Hardly a day passed for the first 33 years of my life that we didn't talk because I always lived within a few hundred yards of her.

She wasn't a particularly religious person but every day brought a new lesson about ethics, morality, charity, and practical things like the value of hard work. When I was 8 or 9 years old she paid me a dollar to shovel the snow off her sidewalk. By the time I was 30 years old she was still paying me the dollar and I was shoveling the sidewalks of 3 of her widowed neighbors as well.

@Cripplecreek

You're a good man, Cripple and your great grandmother knew the value of a dollar. 

[Smokin Joe]

I didn't vote for a Pope in November. I voted for a guy to clean this mess up.

All politicians lie and have for a long time. I have to go back to Gerald Ford to find a President that didn't.

But Frank, We were assured he was an outsider and NOT A POLITICIAN, but a Businessman!

Ya gotta be part of the Curia to vote for a Pope...

[Cripplecreek]

But Frank, We were assured he was an outsider and NOT A POLITICIAN, but a Businessman!

Ya gotta be part of the Curia to vote for a Pope...

Its OK for Trump to lie but the "Fake Media" is another matter.

[Right_in_Virginia]

@Cripplecreek

Until I got out in the adult world, I didn't know people lied.  I am now very old, likely the oldest person on this forum and Trump is the worst liar I have ever witnessed.

That's quite a statement @Victoria33  What, exactly, makes President Trump "the worst liar" you have ever witnessed?

[Smokin Joe]

Its OK for Trump to lie but the "Fake Media" is another matter.

How 'bout that?  :nometalk:

[Cripplecreek]

@Cripplecreek

You're a good man, Cripple and your great grandmother knew the value of a dollar. 

@Victoria33

She said her first vote was for Calvin Coolidge and it made her first husband angry because he was a democrat and didn't want women voting. He ditched her during the depression and she married my great grandfather who was a hell of a man to take a woman and 5 kids in during the depression.

[Victoria33]

@Victoria33

She said her first vote was for Calvin Coolidge and it made her first husband angry because he was a democrat and didn't want women voting. He ditched her during the depression and she married my great grandfather who was a hell of a man to take a woman and 5 kids in during the depression.

@Cripplecreek

That says she was the woman he needed.  That was good for both of them and the kids.
My father had a job with an oil company during the depression so he was never out of work like so many were.  By the time I was sort of aware of how things worked, I thought it was normal life that everyone had to have "stamps" to buy shoes and gas and sugar, etc.. (WWII)

[EasyAce]

@EasyAce
@Quix

My brain and body are in good shape so far.  I never stop learning, studying, writing.

Neither do I, even if about a third of my writing these days is writing music. ;) (I have a new blues band,
leaning heavily on the jazzier side of the blues, and I've been writing a small volume of new music
for this band.)

Years have given me experience others have not had.  I lived in an earlier United States that was so different than it is now.

Welcome to the club. :) There has been much change for the better; there has been much for the worse. When
it's better, it's very, very better; when it's worse, oy vey!

[EC]

If this is changed to say "If we do what is right in the end, then how we got there is less important", would that give you any change of heart?

No.

Killing bin Laden = good.

Killing bin Laden by nuking an entire city = not good.

[DB]

Ends justify the means thinking is a hallmark trait of progressivism.

Alinsky on ends vs means

    1. One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

    2. The judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.

    3. In war the end justifies almost any means.

    4. Judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.

    5. Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.

    6. The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.

    7. Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics.

    8. The morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.

    9. Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.

    10. You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.

    11. Goals must be phrased in general terms like “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” “Of the Common Welfare,” “Pursuit of Happiness,” or “Bread and Peace.”

The ends justify the means type thinking eventually comes to people and ovens. Once you start justifying evil actions for the greater good the limits eventually just fade away into raw evil. The prior smaller evils that "got results" numbs one to the greater evils that follow - all for the greater good. And people who review history wonder how that happens. It is becoming apparent.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

No.

Killing bin Laden = good.

Killing bin Laden by nuking an entire city = not good.

So if you were alive, you would not have liked Truman nuking Hiroshima or Nagasaki so the war could be prolonged and we could lose a million more US troops?

Right.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

The ends justify the means type thinking eventually comes to people and ovens. Once you start justifying evil actions for the greater good the limits eventually just fade away into raw evil. The prior smaller evils that "got results" numbs one to the greater evils that follow - all for the greater good. And people who review history wonder how that happens. It is becoming apparent.

So let's review shall we?

1. Almost everything Trump has done since becoming president most conservatives agree with.

2. Some are looking past that and offering condemnation at Trump, not that it was the right thing to do, but because he had a change of heart.

You are equating a change of heart with some "raw evil" the man has. 

It must really bother you that Ronald Reagan, a leftist Democrat early on, led anti-nuclear marches, had Franklin Roosevelt as a hero, and joined the radical American Veterans Committee whose motto was "Citizens First, Veterans Second".

You must have thought Reagan was an evil man and everything he did for conservatives in the 80s was "raw evil" because he had a change of heart.

I suggest you simply watch DT and see if he begins going back to his old ways, then attack him, rather than attacking him for things you likely agree with him doing.

[musiclady]

@Cripplecreek

Until I got out in the adult world, I didn't know people lied.  I am now very old, likely the oldest person on this forum and Trump is the worst liar I have ever witnessed.

The significance of that should be underscored, @Victoria33 .

I know some are thrilled by what Trump has DONE in the past week, but forgetting who he IS, is a big mistake.

I think I'm about 15 years younger than you, but I completely agree that I've never seen any politician as deceitful as Trump before.

But clearly integrity is no longer a criterion for Republicans any more than it has been for Democrats, and so we are in a small minority, I guess, in wishing that honor still mattered.

[musiclady]

What did you expect in a culture and society that no longer values or respects the foundational principles that once established and maintained a civil society?

It's all about payback, retribution and power in order to exact those things now seen a more important than traditional morality.

We have new moralities - and they trump what maintained us for two centuries.

Whatever it takes is now the Supreme Rule, and the supreme law that motivates and animates.

To hell with everything else, including the Constitution.

That is what I am learning by reading and listening to both the Leftists and the Pendulum swing of the Trump faithful.

You have no idea, @INVAR , how encouraging it is to me that there are at least a few of us who still believe in values and integrity.   Your posts both inspire and discourage me, since so few agree with you.....

[Cripplecreek]

So let's review shall we?

1. Almost everything Trump has done since becoming president most conservatives agree with.

2. Some are looking past that and offering condemnation at Trump, not that it was the right thing to do, but because he had a change of heart.

You are equating a change of heart with some "raw evil" the man has. 

It must really bother you that Ronald Reagan, a leftist Democrat early on, led anti-nuclear marches, had Franklin Roosevelt as a hero, and joined the radical American Veterans Committee whose motto was "Citizens First, Veterans Second".

You must have thought Reagan was an evil man and everything he did for conservatives in the 80s was "raw evil" because he had a change of heart.


I suggest you simply watch DT and see if he begins going back to his old ways, then attack him, rather than attacking him for things you likely agree with him doing.

Right off the top I doubt what you say about Reagan being a far left democrat is true. You're not posting anything to back it up and Reagan said the democrats left him about the time the democrats began acting exactly the way you claim Reagan did. I suspect its about as valid as the Trumper clown who told me that Coolidge was a Klansman.

Even if it were true it has nothing to do with the point about the ends justifying the means.  Your claims about Reagan are about a change of heart, not lying to get one's way.

You're a perfect example of why electing dishonest men is dangerous.  Dishonest men need dishonest men to support them.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

But clearly integrity is no longer a criterion for Republicans any more than it has been for Democrats, and so we are in a small minority, I guess, in wishing that honor still mattered.

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Right off the top I doubt what you say about Reagan being a far left democrat is true. You're not posting anything to back it up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan

Google says that took 0.2 seconds to collect the info

[musiclady]

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Gross misinterpretation of that Scripture.

Jesus never told us to approve of sin.  And that is exactly what is being done by supporting Trump's lies and excusing them by saying every politician lies.

If you are trying to go to the Bible to defend unrepentant sin and pathological lying, you're going to fail.

Every time.