The Era of Lies

It is difficult to look outward at a time like this. The world has not stopped, although that is the sensation. There will be American elections, negotiations for an exit from the war in Syria taking place in Geneva this week, and the refugee crisis continues to be acute. It is natural that in times of domestic turbulence, all this would have a smaller dimension for Brazilians.

There is a new element — and risk — in this attempt at self-knowledge and understanding; it is happening in the environment of social networks. It is there that our collective consciousness has formed, and in that space, there are many demons. Instead of seeing the world that the Internet opens up, we seem to be increasingly sinking into a dark dungeon of lies and slander.

Looking outward could teach us something. “Knowing stories of the world enlarges our horizons and helps us reflect on our own values,” I heard once from an editor. The American elections are an example of this with what Brazil is experiencing at this time.

Analysts have tried to understand the rapid ascension of Donald Trump in the Republican Party primaries to determine who will be the Republican candidate for the race to the White House. This week, a new hypothesis emerged: Trump advances because he lies.

In a bit more than 4.5 hours of audio from interviews and speeches between [March] 7 and 11, the website Politico.com found one misstatement [on average] every five minutes. “His remarks represent an extraordinary mix of inaccurate claims about domestic and foreign policy and personal and professional boasts that rarely measure up when checked against primary sources,” says the site.

In 2015, Trump led the ranks of liars on FactCheck and PolitiFact, which monitor and check what politicians are saying. The latter identified 76 percent of the magnate’s declarations as being partially or totally false. Trump is not the only one. The Republican Ted Cruz lies as much as Trump. At least, less than 49 percent of what Hillary Clinton says is half-truths and falsities, according to the site, which also caught other primary candidates.

Politicians lie. But here is another fact which analysts observe about the Trump Campaign: “These untruths — strung together as they are in all of his speeches — have helped drive one of the most rapid ascents in modern presidential campaign history,” according to Politico.com, which cited a definition of “truthiness” (that which has truth), an expression created by the comedian Stephen Colbert: “a truth which a person feels in their heart or intuitively believes, without relation to evidence, logic or fact.”

In other words, the electorate is not worried about the veracity of what the candidates are saying. They want to hear “their truth.” And Trump is a specialist in saying what the Republican electorate wants to hear — whether fact or not. “Who cares?” he laughed when questioned, according to The New York Times in a profile published this week.*

“In the 12 years of FactCheck.org’s existence, we’ve never seen his match. He stands out not only for the sheer number of his factually false claims, but also for his brazen refusals to admit error when proven wrong,” says FactCheck.org.

Politicians don’t just lie, as lying has become a part of the campaign strategy, catalyzed by the Internet. In a virtual space, lies are mixed together in an information cake with the same weight as truth. The polarization of the electorate, which is also deepening in Brazil, exacerbates these phenomena. Radicals on the right and the left live in their own social network bubbles. They don’t go on the Internet to search for and share just any information, but just that which confirms their convictions.

“The Internet has democratized access to information, it’s also democratized who gets to be the source of that information, creating an environment in which the truth is easily discovered, but misinformation, and those who spread it, can also thrive,” wrote Issie Lapowsky in WIRED.

In his new book “The Internet of Us,” the philosopher Michael P. Lynch argues that technological innovations produce a paradox; even knowing more, we seem to understand less. By trusting in search sites, we cease to learn by observation, inquiry and reason. In the review of that book in The New Yorker, Jill Lepore proclaimed the end of the era of facts: “In the history of truth, a new chapter begins.”

*Translator’s note: When referring to the recent New York Times profile, the author was referring to the following passage regarding the truth of a statement about room decorations at Mar-a-Lago (and not specifically to campaign-related issues): “In the early years, Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka slept in the same children’s suite that Dina Merrill, an actress and a daughter of Mrs. Post, occupied in the 1930s. Mr. Trump liked to tell guests that the nursery rhyme-themed tiles in the room were made by a young Walt Disney.

“You don’t like that, do you?” Mr. Trump would say when he caught Mr. Senecal rolling his eyes. The house historian would protest that it was not true. “Who cares?” Mr. Trump would respond with a laugh.”