Tuesday, January 11, 2022

The Power of Lies

 We have, for over a year, battled Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. 

Extensive voter fraud. LIE

Dead people by the thousands voted. LIE

He won the election by a huge margin. LIE

 Noncitizens voted. LIE

What is the result? A recent poll indicated 71% of Republicans believed President Biden was not legitimately elected. The same poll showed 33% of all voters believed the same thing. The question is why? 

Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Kahneman says in Thinking, Fast and Slow, “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”Once a concept’s popularity ascends to a certain point, people will blindly assume its truth, and no amount of valid criticism can fully eradicate it.

So people believe the election was not legitimate because they keep hearing that from the former President and constantly on Fox News. No one has provided proof. No lists of illegal voters. No list of dead people who voted. No evidence of illegal absentee ballots. If there was fraud they have had a full year to make their case and provide proof. They haven’t because there isn’t any. Now, it doesn’t matter. People have heard the lies repeated over and over. They cannot distinguish between the familiar and the truth. 

It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them after they have been fooled of the truth. 

We are going to live with the effects of these lies for a long time. 



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