It’s time to have a heart-to-heart talk about truth, lies, facts and fiction. A whole new season of make-it-up-as-Trump-goes is underway. So, I felt obligated to share some research about how bad many of our countrymen, and yes, they are mostly men, have gotten in recognizing nonsense when it lands on them.
First, a short list of facts:
On Aug. 8, the FBI executed a search warrant at the home of former President Donald Trump. The warrant was issued by a federal magistrate in Florida, who had the legal authority to do so, after a determination was made that probable cause existed that a crime was being committed on the property. The FBI seized and removed several sets of documents. Many of these documents were defined as confidential, classified, and/or top secret. Regardless of these labels, many of the documents were not authorized to be there and were being sought by the National Archives and Records Administration, which had been trying to gather them for months.
Whew. Again, those are facts. These are not all of the facts, but for simplicity’s sake, the paragraph above is entirely factual. These facts, as is the case with all facts, should not be confused with truths. Truth is more akin to what one believes.
Americans once had a more rational perspective on what political speak even is and what it isn’t. It never used to be gospel. But fans, idolizers and devotees of the most recent former president are rewriting the handbook on what people can and will believe, and how they come to believe it. It is embarrassingly easy.
Beth Anne Helgason and Daniel Effron of the London Business School published an extensive study on the topic this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology titled, “It might become true: How prefactual thinking licenses dishonesty.”
The concept of “prefactual thinking” is just what it sounds like: A narrative, rhetoric or theory is provided that could end up being factual before the facts are known, so that when it is time to decide what is true, the masses have already been conned into believing something clearly untrue. An example is the announcement by the Trump team that the FBI planted evidence last week. As a “prefact,” it will no longer matter what actually happened to those who want to believe the earliest preferred theory. Trump supporters are already convinced that the comforting made-up fiction is true.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr’s description of the Mueller Report is an earlier example of the same thing. He released a statement on the report that served as the definitive result of the larger set of facts that convinced a good number of Americans that there were no crimes committed. That’s not what the report actually said, but the shorter, simpler and earlier description of the complicated findings is what many will always believe. It’s too much work to overcome the manipulation and biases that were first established.
An epidemic of gullibility has spread across America, and it is scarier to me than COVID-19. I have read recent commentary from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, David Brooks of the New York Times and David Frum of The Atlantic all surrender to this sickness, as if there is no hope for facts ever prevailing in the world of Trump.
I am more optimistic.
Dr. Grant Hilary Brenner wrote in April for Psychology Today, “We are profoundly unfamiliar with the information environment in which we live and the ways our own psychology plays a role in what we decide is real and true.”
We are capable of becoming familiar with the environment though. We can learn. We learned how cigarettes are killers, how seatbelts are life savers, and how Trump University was a scam, didn’t we? The key is those who know better can’t stop defending actual facts over prefacts, or in other words, nonsense.
Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com. This commentary was originally published at indianacapitalchronicle.com. Send comments to [email protected].
