Drooliani: "Truth is what we say it is."

[MineralMan]

For Republicans, truth is fungible. It's all Newspeak. Today's truth is tomorrow's falsehood, and vice-versa.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. He sounded pretty senile to me.

Next interview I expect him to drool, scratch himself and ask whether they are having chocolate pudding for dessert.

[Eliot Rosewater]

2. And while we "frame" the situation we are in, repeatedly, correctly, myself included

the KGB and GOP are hacking and stealing elections and if that wont work they will frame the dems and flip votes and blame dems and call the elections null and void and if that wont work they will just start shooting.

[underpants]

3. They'll say he was "out over his skis"

Giuliani style

[MineralMan]

4. Out of his mind, it seems to me.

[saidsimplesimon]

7. Crazy like Idi Amin with syphilis or some such brain damage?

[shraby]

5. They just make it up as they go along. If the new doesn't match what they said yesteday,

oh, well.

Put it all in the book of Republican Fairy Tales.

[Boomerproud]

20. Those fairy tales (aka LIES) eventually end up hurting

everyone. We should all be paying very close attention.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. It's reality show politics.

Reality tv shows aren't real either, but they're called reality shows - so the viewers buy into the "reality" of these shows, which of course are totally staged and scripted and have nothing to do with reality or truth. In Trumpworld, "truth" is whatever the producer of Trump's reality show - Trump himself, with the help of his stooges - has staged and scripted, and which his cult followers have blindly accepted as true.

[MineralMan]

8. Yes. Reality show. Politics has always been a venue where

truth is fungible. Sadly, much of what is said by politicians isn't true, or is truth stretched to its breaking point. That's one of the flaws of American politics, and has been for a very long time.

That's regrettable. However, it's rare when someone like Drooliani comes right out and says it. He doesn't know what's true. Trump can't remember from day to day what he said previously, so he's constantly changing his story. But, then, Trump doesn't care about truth in the first place.

The rest of us get most things at second hand, at best, or even further separated from real sources, so we have a hard time in many cases knowing what is true and what is false. The best we can do is to listen to sources who have proven themselves to be accurate in the past.

It's all screwed up.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

15. I wouldn't call political truth fungible so much as fluid.

Politics is mostly marketing, and politicians are always trying to sell us something, so their sales pitches will almost inevitably be less than 100% perfectly true. Any salesman will tell you how great his product is - and may considerably exaggerate its greatness - and will downplay or fail to mention the product's flaws. This is normal spin, but it becomes fraud if the pitch includes outright lies. Political truth usually contains enough spin to create its own gravitational field, but everybody understands that there's a difference between spin and perfect truth. We've learned to take our politicians, even the ones we like, with a grain of salt, so most of us listen to political sales pitches with some skepticism because we know they are not quite the truth.

What we need to know is when political truth - that is, a spun sales pitch that isn't actually false or fraudulent - is divorced from truth entirely. Political analysis has become epistemology.

[MineralMan]

21. Marketing. Yes.

Since I write website marketing content for a living, I understand this all too well. I cannot, for example, write, "We have the lowest prices." That sentence can become untrue and lead to problems. I can, however, write, "You'll get our lowest possible price." I can write that, because it is, essentially meaningless, but true. How the customer often sees the two statements is that they are equivalent.

It's always a fine line, and people are not always able to see the difference. It can be awkward, at times, marketing can.

[GoCubsGo]

9. Paging Mr. Orwell...

If a Democrat had said that, we'd never hear the end of the outrage. Instead, everyone just shrugs their shoulders.

[PearliePoo2]

10. CNN and MSNBC are running wild with this!

In fact, after they played the clip, Alex Witt was actually stuttering because she couldn't find the words to respond.

She asked a guest what he thought and at first, he too, was speechless.

The Republican guest said Rudy should NEVER be on another show or give an interview again!

Their following discussion was really good and in depth. (Once they found their words!)

[MineralMan]

12. He's old and senile, and is an attorney.

That combination is not conducive to truthfulness in the first place. Truth is, for Giuliani, a changeable, sometimes thing. It's whatever the story is that he's supposed to present. Add to that his creeping senility, and he's lost all touch with what is true and false.

So, for him, truth truly isn't necessary truth. He can't tell the difference any longer. That's partly due to his failing intellect and partly due to what he has done as an attorney for so many years. Everything is conditional to him.

He's just addled enough to blurt things out these days.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

17. He and Trump are perfect for each other.

Even more than Giuliani, Trump's entire career for his whole adult life has been based on fraud. When Giuliani was a U.S. Attorney he was at least somewhat constrained by the law and the court system, but Trump has never had any real limits. And now he's gone senile, too. I don't think either of them knows or cares about what's real and what isn't.

[MineralMan]

18. We are currently governed by the addled and befuddled.

Worse, the same people are life-long fraudsters. All of them, at least, on the Republican side. Look at McConnell and Ryan. Truth has no place in their brains.

[0rganism]

11. reminds me of Rove from the W years

"we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Republicans grab the initiative, set out implementing their bad ideas, and by the time people understand how destructive they are, it's damage done and we're already living in their marginally shittier world.

[MineralMan]

13. Yes, exactly. That crowd MANUFACTURES truth.

Or what they want people to believe to be the truth, anyhow. Propaganda and scheming.

[0rganism]

16. remember this? "the greatest quality of knighthood..."

our entire nation is about to go on the grail quest and we don't even know it yet

[Guilded Lilly]

14. The Cretin's degenerate, ignorant brain disease is catching

[MineralMan]

19. Paul Simon wrote this:

"A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest." A line from "The Boxer."

So it is with government and the people who are governed.