Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

Imagine if a U.S. president were to flagrantly make up a claim that some other country was developing weapons of mass destruction. Imagine that there was no way to verify this claim. Imagine that the president insisted on invading said country on the basis of the unsupported claim.

Do most people still expect that someone in that position will not post clearly false messages, specially when those messages affect something as fundamental as the death of thousands of people and the overthrow of a government?

Iran contra, Watergate, Vietnam, ...

Is there any trust left?

It's bewildering that the answer is, "Yes". It's discouraging that so many presidents have so often deceived the people so horribly. It's much much more discouraging that the people don't learn.

Propaganda machine at work. Americans will always believe it is the best and most moral country in the world even if it the exact opposite.

What exactly is your position? That no one should believe any statement from any politician ever and so there is no reason to demand that politicians live up to any standards?

How exactly is a society with those principles supposed to function?

We can do that or we can sit and wait for the electorate to pick a president who never lies.

Only one of the two is realistic.

A: no one should believe any statement from any politician ever

B: don't demand that politicians meet standards

Your argument (not mine): A -> B

Then you argue that B is dysfunctional so A leads to dysfunction.

Can you not imagine some C such as

C: demand that politicians live up to some standard

Wherein A->C makes everything better?

The fact that you concocted B to discredit A is a logical fallacy called "strawman".

Either you already understood this, but hoped for an audience that did not, or you didn't even realize what you had done. I point it out here for your possible benefit and for the possible benefit of anyone else who doesn't understand this flawed reasoning. I apologize to everyone who recognized it immediately and has then suffered through this response.

You seemed to have missed the context that you're arguing the "against" position in a thread about social media fact-checking, i.e. a "demand that politicians live up to some standard [of truth]"

Language has implied meaning, it's one of the maxims of conversation in the field of linguistics, of the Cooperative principle [1].

If you're going to immediately jump to technical dissection of a conversation, you should probably consider the relevant field first.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle#Maxim_of...

Somewhat off-topic, but it's funny you mention Iran contra and not Operation Ajax [1] where the CIA literally distributed propaganda and overthrew the Iranian government.

This lead to huge stability in Iran and the middle-east and arguably lead to the rise of Al-Qaeda and a super unpopular right-wing religious government in Iran that they have now.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

All modern administrations maybe aside from Jimmy Carter’s have had shenanigans going on. None of them are clean. So it’s clear there will be lies from everyone. Some intentional, some mistaken.

That said. I don’t see a solution to this dilemma. It has no satisfactory solution.

"If you like your health care plan, you can keep it" is up there as well.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-y...

Your "strawman" was very clearly directly implied by what you said. And the fact that you just attacked the argument instead of just responding like a normal person does not help your case.

Calling a President out on their lies seems like a satisfactory solution to me.

Unfortunately, the modern political climate is such that even that is considered censorship. We can't even dare claim that lies exist, because obviously no one person or institution can be trusted to define what is and isn't truth without an ulterior motive.

So the only politically correct solution is to assert that all politicians are equally (maximally) corrupt, all statements are equally valid, all attempts at nuance are motivated by partisan hypocrisy, and any possible solution is a slippery slope to an Orwellian dystopia, so we have no option but to simply let the fire burn.

Although I must say, it is strange how none of this seemed to be the case prior to 2016.

That is a very apples to oranges comparison. For example, in the case of Iraq (a terrible moral mistake and embarrassment for the US in my opinion), the President, his administration, and most of the media really believed the Iraqi's were making weapons of mass destruction. They were extremely biased, and they suppressed the counter argument. All bad, I am not trying to defend it, but not the same. The other historical examples you give are all different in their own way. But in almost every case (except Watergate) they involve some reputable people who in good faith believed what they were saying.

No knowledgeable person believes what Trump is saying about mail in ballots. I don't think he believes it. This is really different.

On the one hand. You are somewhat right.

Except the his administration part. I dont think cheney and rumsfeld believed it. It was largely manufactured. And the “counter arguments” werent really arguments. The administrations own advisors said the uranium couldnt have been sold.

And the tubes they barely clung to as proof were heavily contested by just as many that believed it internally. Thats not actionable intel.

And when the advisor outed his own reports publicly, his wifes career was ended by being outed.

It was malicous from within from specific participants, but not necessarily the president. Unvetted, unactionable intel was used as cover. Nothing more.

Bushes negligence was not being throrough and surrounding himself and empowering the absolutely wrong people. But the buck still stopped with him.

Melodramatic. Big tech has appointed itself as the gatekeepers of truth, and has regularly added new creative types of censorship. Look at his Twitter, where positive comments are reparented so professional noise makers can whine. Look at all of the content creators who have been deplatformed, demonitized, and algorithmically deprioritized in favor of allowed speech. Creative, right?

Now is an opportune time for Trump to make a big claim to get attention and frame reality to his advantage. Politics 101. Trump is actively being attacked by a well established and well funded machine. Reminding people of this as election time approaches mobilizes them.