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Was the whole TikTok drama a bait-and-switch to make Trump look good? (www.independent.co.uk)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

That's kind of like random people confessing to killing Brian Thompson. Is it really a confession if everyone knows you're lying? Likewise, is it really a protestation if neither the speaker nor listener believes it?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yes it is, and saying it isn't is normalizing a terrifying thing.

    The crux of your argument is that someone isn't lying is nobody believes them. Ergo, Donald Trump isn't a liar.

    This is the EXACT fucking playbook you see in Russia and North Korea. The way you are thinking right now is SPECIFICALLY how dictators WANT you to think. It excuses lies and paves the way to the concept of there being no such thing as objective truth because everyone is lying anyways, but they're not even lies because you were never going to believe it anyways. You'll just exhaustedly shrug and choose a dissonance that's a lower energy mental state.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    It's less about lying though.

    Hypocrisy, at least colloquially, means saying one thing and doing another, such as governors giving stay at home orders and hosting large parties during COVID mitigations.

    Saying we should ban TikTok and then saying we shouldn't ban it isn't hypocrisy. If we're being charitable, it's him changing his mind, and if we're not, it's simple populism. There's a good reason the ban was scheduled for just before inauguration, they knew it would be unpopular and didn't want it to impact the elections.

    Trump is absolutely a liar, probably worse than most politicians. He's also often a hypocrite. I just don't think "hypocrite" applies in this instance.

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