Lies, mistakes, niceties and jokes

The political analysts stand in disbelief due to Donald Trump not losing votes on lies. No, it won't be a pro-Trump political post, I've done that already. It's an analysis on social thinking using the Trump phenomenon as example. The problem of the analysts is that they think rationally: "Trump tells not true things = Trump is lying or ignorant". However the voters are socials who tell non-true things all the time and merely see Trump as one of them. There are two versions of non-true things common among socials: jokes/hyperboles and niceties.

Niceties are non-true things that are told to make someone feel better without hurting anyone. When you tell your partner "I'd bring down the Moon for you", you don't actually plan to deliver a 7.342×10¹⁹ tons object. When you tell everyone you meet "Nice to see you!", you don't really mean you like everyone on the planet. When you show gratitude on Christmas for the annual ugly sweater from your aunt, you don't actually plan to wear it. You just want someone to feel better. Now Trump indeed has a twist: most of his niceties are aimed to make himself feel better, which is funny/sad, but irrelevant.

Jokes/hyperboles are non-truth statements that couldn't be believed by a non-insane person. They are either made to exxagerate an opinion or simply generate laughter by the bizarre unreality they'd literally mean.

Let's see a list of examples:

• "my opponent has no child care plan. She never will and if it ever evolves into a plan it’ll never get done anyway. All talk. No action." It's a hyperbole: while Clinton has a detailed plan, most platform plans of politicians are usually not delivered. Trump is entitled to believe that Clinton will not implement them.
• “I finished it [the birther movement]. I finished it. You know what I mean.” He jumped on a hunch that his 2012 opponent (he considered running) could be disqualified but Obama delivered evidence. Anyone in his place would have done the same. Clinton in 2008 did too, just was smart enough to not under her name. Instead of saying "hey, it is worth a shot" he says "it was an important issue and getting a negative answer is a victory." Nicety to himself as his statement - if believed by everyone would serve no other purpose than him feeling better.
• "Household incomes are over $4,000 less today than they were in the year 2000.” Hyperbole. Everyone can see his own income so there is no hope to make anyone factually believe he is worse off than before. He is merely stating the obvious: under the Democrat Presidency the economy didn't particularly shine.
• “That means rebuilding our badly depleted military.” see also "generals reduced to rubble". Hyperbole: while the US armed forces are very far from being depleted and we can doubt that the quality of the flag officers decreased, it is without doubt that the US forces failed to achieve any major war objective in the last 2 decades. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya were total disasters. While we can argue over the reasons, the basic statement "something is very wrong with our military policies" is true.
• "I lost hundreds of friends on 9/11": nicety. No one has hundreds of friends, it's over the Dumbar number. It's merely a nicer way to say "lots of good people were lost that day"
• "I opposed the Iraq war": nicety. The Bush Government lied to the public, so common people - like Trump was - were unable to make an informed decision. And even if they did, it didn't matter as they were not in the position to act against it. Claiming that he was right all along serves no other purpose than him feeling better.
• Clinton fought the ISIS all her life: hyperbole. The ISIS is less than 5 years old while Clinton is an adult for 50 years, so no sane person can take this literally. It means that Clinton failed to stop ISIS despite best efforts, which is true.

I can go on and on, but you get the point. While Trump says awful lot of un-truths, he barely ever lies by the classification of social people. Therefore he is seen more trustworthy than Clinton by the voters. While Clinton said very few un-true statements, virtually all of them were lies: attempts to manipulate others to do what she wants against their interests and attempts to cover up her harmful actions.

I'd like to stress that I do not support using jokes and spending valuable political on air time for ego-boosting, but I'm not the electorate. Analysts, journalists and opponents have to live with the fact that these things are OK in politics in the Facebook age.


PS: I put the advises on League of Legends to good use: