https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/01/21/americas-225-moment-scary-lurch-toward-autocracy
"What is even the point of all this lying and blatant know-nothingism? It’s to show utter contempt for the very concept of facts — much like when Trump himself, despite a well-documented history of racist remarks and acts, says, “I am the least racist person you will ever interview,” or sends out a spokesman to boast about the size of the crowd at his inauguration, proven by photos to be much smaller than those of his predecessors. That disdain for an objective, provable truth — as Orwell so correctly noted — is the most powerful defining trait of authoritarian regimes. Increasingly, Trump and his minions use lying as a bizarre way to bond him more closely to members of Congress like Perdue and Cotton, to his inner circle, and to his most loyal political base, the 36 Percent. Listen to what Xavier Marquez wrote in the Washington Post last January, that “lies can help ensure the loyalty of subordinates who are forced to repeat them. These kinds of lies need not be credible at all to people outside the regime. The more incredible a lie is, the more it can credibly signal loyalty to a political leader in conditions of low trust. When a subordinate repeats an obviously ridiculous claim he or she is degraded, and bound more closely to the leader.” That’s not all. The Big Lies that increasingly are becoming the calling card of the Trump White House are meant not to win political debate but to destroy it, by discouraging all of those who are inclined to fight for the truth but who over time — lie by lie by lie — become so discouraged that they simply give up. And this is why it really matters, because that indifference is what drives good people to say nothing when political activists or sick children are rounded up for deportation, or when Congress acts to take health care away from the poor or from little kids at the same time there is plenty of money for billionaire tax cuts. When the people are too beaten down to fight back."
