You think being called a liar, with evidence in hand, is ridicule? And you claim civility? You're a walking instruction. It's uncivil to call out the lie? You just want to walk both sides of the street: to lie, and to be immune to the consequences. And it runs deeper than that: yours is the path of the ultimate destruction of both meaning and civility. On that basis I call you out as an enemy and invite you to correct the indictment.

No I think threatening others, then following through with the threat despite me doing what you asked, is uncivil at best, downright dangerous at worst. That you won’t apply your own censorial standards to yourself, and without irony, proves all I care to know.

proves all I care to know. — NOS4A2

That mean you'll be silent?

I’ve corrected the indictment, proved it false, proved the hypocrisy, and will leave you to them.

The Russian influence canard is mostly an anti-Trump hoax. — NOS4A2

You say “mostly,” and given your penchant for hyperbole, this claim is rather meaningless.

It's not "unprecendented" to react to lies. Obama's "lie" that you could keep your health insurance after the ACA resulted in quite a lot of backlash. Now multiply the number of lies by 10,800.

As this article states:

"Donald Trump has made many false or misleading statements, including thousands during his presidency. Commentators and fact-checkers have described the rate of his falsehoods as unprecedented in politics"

It seems to me that the quantity of backlash per lie is actually much lower with Trump than with Obama, or any prior President.

Speaking of Obama and lies, yesterday at a G7 news conference, Trump said:

[Crimea] was sort of taken away from President Obama. Not taken away from President Trump, taken away from President Obama. … President Obama was not happy that this happened because it was embarrassing to him. Right. It was very embarrassing to him and he wanted Russia to be out of the, what was called the G8, and that was his determination. He was outsmarted by Putin. He was outsmarted. President Putin outsmarted President Obama.

Putin outsmarted Obama by annexing the Crimea and Obama was so butthurt by this he got Russia kicked out of the G8???

Dementia or a bad joke? Either way, it's not a good sign.

A lie is a falsity with an intention to deceive. No backlashes are warranted when one says something wrong. The outrage is premised on the fundamental attribution error, assuming malicious motives, and further assuming you’ve assumed correctly. When will the burning in effigy turn to burning at the stake?

A lie is a falsity with an intention to deceive. — NOS4A2

I was generously treating Trump's many untruths the same as the right treated Obama. Obama was not intending to deceive, but the reaction from the right treated it that way. Obama later acknowledged he was wrong, and apologized for his bad prediction. Trump owes us quite a few apologies.

No backlashes are warranted when one says something wrong. The outrage is premised on the fundamental attribution error, assuming malicious motives, and further assuming you’ve assumed correctly. When will the burning in effigy turn to burning at the stake?

Wrong. It is in the general interest to set the record straight when any sort of untruth is put forward. That is more than adequate warrant. Certainly Trump is not always trying to deceive - he probably actually believes the global warming scare is a Chinese conspiracy, that vaccines cause autism and that Muslims in the U.S. were celebrating 9/11. He probably really doesn't believe the Russians interfered in the 2016 election. I'm sure he really believed there were millions of illegal votes cast in the 2016 election.

Despite these not being technically lies, they should be every bit as concerning and certainly warrant being called out. We should all hope that policies are based on facts, not misconceptions. The cause for concern transcends individual untruths; it's concerning that he seems to have little regard for facts, unless they happen to coincide with what he already believes. Not believing the Intelligence Agencies he leads? That's bizarre.

I’ve corrected the indictment, proved it false, proved the hypocrisy, and will leave you to them. — NOS4A2

Here again is the exchange, including that which you claim counters and proves false "the indictment," and establishes its hypocrisy:

The Russian influence canard is mostly an anti-Trump hoax.
— NOS4A2

A canard is "a false or unfounded report or story; especially : a fabricated report: a groundless rumor or belief."
Your statement is categorical. Make your case or recant within three days, lacking that I request you be banned. The world is too full of liars and and their lies.
↪tim wood

That’s unjust, but what I’m speaking about is the notion of “Russian influence” on social media, as if meddling on Twitter is akin to meddling in an election. According to the Mueller report, the IRA is a private company, and not an arm of the Russian government. — NOS4A2

I'll leave it to others to judge. But I do not see where you corrected anything or proved or demonstrated anything, except an ability to wriggle like a rat or a weasel. Or the liar that you insist on demonstrating that you are.

Trump's advocacy for Russia rejoining the G7, and his disgraceful- account of the circumstances of Russia's annexation of Crimea, would again be grounds for impeachment, if not being charged with treason, in any normal presidency.

Actually, I think they should change his title to Resident Trump, as he merely resides at the White House; in no way does he act as an actual President. Only one letter difference!

He's not properly engaging your list of lies because he either can't be bothered or because he senses that you have a point, or a combination of the two. It requires less effort to hand wave and it functions as an evasive maneuver. But I'm confident that he could produce propaganda explaining away each lie on that list. He moulds himself in the fashion of his idol.

You failed to address my argument and ran to the authorities to seek my suppression. Bad faith, censorship, hypocrisy, and general worm-like cowardice.

Wise and knowing. One reads out of it an advice to disengage, that I call good advice. It leaves a question: what is the right thing to do with the liar? What is the right approach for even thinking about it?

Many liars live like creatures burrowed into a riverbank or under a hedge. They keep for the most part to their own world. One can learn to keep away from them, and when they venture out, to take appropriate care in dealing with them. Evenso, and in even that constrained way, they can like predators around a farm do much local damage.

But some liars keep a public presence and spread harm in their wake as just part of their being - they are toxic beings.

My own view is that all of us tell some lies, so I cannot be too militant as against all who tell lies, they being us and me. But some liars, though tagged with the same label, are a different order of being. The pathological, the psychopathic, sick for whatever reason, and capable of damage at a scale not to be tolerated. Trump is such a person. Near as I can tell, if he ever did a good thing, it was for a corrupt reason or an accident.

I think also that many people have no experience with this kind of lying, and consequently completely misunderstand it.

It seems to me that the common lie is to gain some advantage, and opposes in some sense the truth - the truth is always there as corrective, whether used or not. The uncommon lie is designed, meant, to destroy the ground such that even truth is rendered powerless, not so much for the current advantage to be gained by the particular lie, but for the future advantage of being able to tell any lie. I call this war by other means.

Given our world now, and the number of such liars in it, and their effectiveness in occupying positions of power, it seems to me that maximum push-back to the limit of the law just is the best that can be done and the least that should be done - in a civil society. In a not-civil society, more is warranted and justified.

My own fantasy is that lying would be actionable in civil and criminal law, beyond how it now is, and more accessibly. The private lie, civil law. The public lie including advertising, criminal law.

You failed to address my argument and ran to the authorities to seek my suppression. Bad faith, censorship, hypocrisy, and general worm-like cowardice. — NOS4A2

The liar's reason poisoned by his own lies. You have no argument. I did not "run" to the authorities. And the rest is laughable empty invective. But you are instructive - or, rather, the occasion for instruction for those who will be instructed. The invitation, from start to even this moment, has been to make your case or recant. And still you're careful to do neither. Clearly you have an agenda of your own, that has nothing to do with the purposes of a site called "The Philosophy Forum." So begone, cur, away to your rat-hole, and trouble here no more.

Donald Ttump smells like moldy cheese.

Ugh, the sanctimonious piffle is all nonsense in lieu of your authoritarian hypocrisy. Please, if you could engage my arguments about the topic you might redeem yourself.

Given our world now, and the number of such liars in it, and their effectiveness in occupying positions of power, it seems to me that maximum push-back to the limit of the law just is the best that can be done and the least that should be done - in a civil society. — tim wood

Positions of power make or enforce the law. Also, if people like Trump supporters accept lies as a sign of solidarity with their tribe, it’s unlikely that truth itself will be an effective antidote. Truth will never be as valued to them as their group identity or tribe is. I think all that can be done is somehow change the group narrative to a positive direction (rather than Trumps direction). He changing the meaning of American conservatism, and not for the better.

So we’re you lying that they were lies? Shouldn’t you now apologize?

Yes, Trump isn’t some technocrat or academic or lawyer. He doesn’t speak eloquently like Obama, or apologize when he gets something wrong. But that’s the problem: all you guys want are slick talkers, people who will enforce the bounds of political correctness and sing you lullabies when the going gets tough. But what has a slick talker or ivy-league lawyer ever really done? What have they created?

But what has a slick talker or ivy-league lawyer ever really done? What have they created? — NOS4A2

You can google all of Obama’s accomplishments yourself.

You can also google all of Trumps failures yourself.

By the way, they say it’s easier to destroy than to create. Trump couldn’t even destroy the Affordable Care Act, despite his best efforts, and majority control of both the house and senate.

I voted for Obama twice. I actually like him. But If you’re aware of his biography, he was a community organizer, a lawyer, a senator, and finally the president: all “accomplishments” he achieved by talking. Has he created anything? Has he built anything?

Did you see the example of the Affordable Care Act? Take a look at my last post again if you missed the addition.

Did you see the example of the Affordable Care Act? Take a look at my last post again if you missed the addition.

Do you think Obama devised and wrote the affordable care act? That’s just not the case. Hell, they mostly stole Mitt Romney’s ideas.

Lol, what, he didn’t do it entirely himself??? What a fraud!

Seriously, dude...

I asked if Obama created or built anything, you gave the example of the Affordable care act. Seriously dude.

But what has a slick talker or ivy-league lawyer ever really done? What have they created? — NOS4A2

Helped the Allies win the Second World War? (Winston Churchill).

Helped the Allies win the Second World War? (Winston Churchill).

Helped the Nazis rise to power? (Hitler)

Your reasoning is absurd (as usual). ANY accomplishment by anyone is more or less attributable to the contributions of others.

And the liar is still with us! It is the art of the liar to seem to mean what his words say, but in fact to mean something else, however distant that thing may be from present concerns. Thus the words of a liar are, with respect to reasonable discernment and understanding, impenetrable and ultimately meaningless in context. His most recent post as evidence. It implies much that is not stated, relies on ignorance, and is deliberately based on wrong data and wrong understanding. Desist, cur!

So we agree that slick talkers have made significant achievements.

I have not lied once. You have been demonstrably proven a liar.