Contemporary Authors

• Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us - April 30, 2019 Broadside Books,

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Carpenter

  Amanda Carpenter
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Jump to navigationJump to search
  Amanda Carpenter
  Amanda Carpenter.jpg
  Born November 20, 1982 (age 35)[a]
  Nationality American
  Alma mater Ball State University
  Occupation Political commentator
  Known for Print and television pundit
  Amanda Carpenter (born November 20, 1982[a]) is an American author, political advisor, and speechwriter. She is a former senior staffer to Senators Jim DeMint and Ted Cruz. She was a columnist for The Washington Times from 2009 to 2010, has an active Twitter following, and regularly appears as a political contributor on CNN.

  Contents
  1 Early life and education
  2 Career in media and politics
  3 Publications
  4 See also
  5 Notes
  6 References
  7 External links
  Early life and education
  Carpenter grew up in Montrose, Michigan.[1] After graduating from Ball State University with a B.A. in Communication Studies in 2005,[2][1][3]

  Career in media and politics
  Carpenter worked as a congressional correspondent for Human Events from 2005 to 2007 before going to Townhall.com to become its national political reporter.[4]

  In March 2009, Carpenter took a position with The Washington Times,[5] where she wrote a daily column called the Hot Button that covered political and cultural issues as well other news articles.[6]

  In early 2010, Carpenter left The Washington Times and joined Senator Jim DeMint's staff as senior communications advisor and speechwriter.[3][7]

  In January 2013, Carpenter became senior communications advisor and speechwriter for Senator Ted Cruz.[8][1]

  In July 2015, Carpenter returned to her journalism career.[9] She is a contributor for CNN.[10] She is known for critiquing President Trump, in particular his treatment of women.[10] Carpenter has said that she agrees with some of his policy decisions, but that the scandals surrounding his presidency make it "very difficult" to defend him.[10] In her 2018 book Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us, she critiques Trump's propensity for lying.[11][12][13]

  Carpenter is also known as a blogger, author, and commentator. She has made numerous media appearances, including segments on the BBC; Fox News's The O'Reilly Factor, Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld, Hannity & Colmes, and The Big Story; MSNBC's Tucker; PBS's To the Contrary and CNN's Larry King Live and Reliable Sources.[14] Her book The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's Dossier on Hillary Rodham Clinton was published in 2006.[14][15] She later wrote about the 2008 presidential election for Glamour magazine's blog "Glamocracy."[14][15] As of June 2015, Carpenter had more than 56,000 followers on Twitter—more than any congressional staffer.[9]

  Publications
  The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's Dossier on Hillary Rodham Clinton. Regnery Publishing. 2006. ISBN 978-1-59698-014-3.
  Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us. Broadside Books . 2018. ISBN 978-0-06274-800-3.
  See also
  Vast right-wing conspiracy
  Notes
  Carpenter's birthday is November 20.[16] She was 31 years old on February 26, 2014.[1]
  References
  Sanchez, Humberto (February 26, 2014). "Amanda Carpenter Is Ted Cruz's Twitter Torrent". Roll Call. Archived from the original on March 26, 2016. Retrieved March 26, 2016.
  Carpenter, Amanda. "Amanda Carpenter". LinkedIn. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
  Weigel, David (January 25, 2010). "DeMint Hires Amanda Carpenter". The Washington Independent. Archived from the original on July 21, 2013.
  "Amanda Carpenter". Townhall. Retrieved April 10, 2010.
  Dornic, Matt (February 5, 2009). "Townhall's Amanda Carpenter to Washington Times". Mediabistro.com. Archived from the original on 2009-10-12. Retrieved April 10, 2010.
  "Amanda Carpenter". WashingtonTimes.com. Archived from the original on April 14, 2010. Retrieved April 10, 2010.
  @amandacarpenter (January 25, 2010). "And the big news is...I'm leaving TWT to join Sen. DeMint's staff as senior communications advisor and speechwriter" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  @amandacarpenter (January 22, 2013). "Thrilled to announce I'm starting my new job today as Senator Cruz's senior communications advisor and speechwriter!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  Lesniewski, Niels (June 9, 2015). "Amanda Carpenter Leaving Ted Cruz World". Roll Call. Archived from the original on March 26, 2016. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
  Evans, Garrett (2018-05-17). "For cable commentators, the 2016 GOP primary never ended". TheHill. Retrieved 2018-05-23.
  Lewis, Matt (2018-05-07). "The Damage of Trump's Low-Bar Presidency Is Worse Than You Think". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2018-05-23.
  Bilton, Nick. "The Conservative Case Against Donald Trump". The Hive. Retrieved 2018-05-23.
  "Amanda Carpenter, "Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us" (Broadside, 2018)". newbooksnetwork.com. Retrieved 2018-05-23.
  Carpenter, Amanda (December 10, 2007). "Glamocracy". Glamocracy (blog). Glamour. Retrieved April 10, 2010.
  Maltz, Phoebe (February 2012). "What's Your Story?—Amanda Carpenter". AmericasFuture.org. Archived from the original on March 26, 2016. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
  @amandacarpenter (November 20, 2009). "Yay, it's my birthday. Another year wiser!" (Tweet). Archived from the original on March 31, 2016 – via Twitter.
  External links
  Amanda Carpenter on Facebook Edit this at Wikidata
  Appearances on C-SPAN
  Articles by Amanda Carpenter on Townhall
  Video discussions in which Amanda Carpenter has taken part via Bloggingheads.tv

• Refinery29 - https://www.refinery29.com/2018/05/197245/amanda-carpenter-cnn-gaslighting-america-book-trump

  QUOTED: "I realized that there were similarities between my story and how Trump gaslit Obama over birtherism, how Trump gaslit Jeb Bush over a link to trutherism and 9/11."
  "When I was gaslit by that Trump supporter [Adriana Cohen] on live television and afterward, it was really discombobulating because everyone knew it wasn’t true—and yet the story was everywhere and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The story could have threatened my whole career, and that’s exactly what it was designed to do: Gaslighting is all about manipulation and control and offensive action. What I want people to understand is Trump pushes and pushes and then turns other people's response into the story—and it's a highly effective media strategy."
  "Trump's gaslighting would not work outside of the current media environment, where there is such a hunger to fill news space, even if it’s not news that’s worthy of space: The media, by and large, is much more reactive than it is enterprising in its own right. And Trump exploits that perfectly."

  Amanda Carpenter On Our Broken Political System & Why We Love It When Trump Lies
  ELIZABETH KIEFER
  MAY 1, 2018, 1:00 PM

  ILLUSTRATED BY TRISTAN OFFIT
  Amanda Carpenter always knew it was possible she could get caught up in a Washington scandal. So she wasn’t surprised — or even worried — when she found out The National Enquirer had published a story about the multiple rumored affairs of her former boss, Sen. Ted Cruz. Carpenter, Cruz’ former speechwriter and a popular anti-Trump conservative pundit at CNN, didn’t even sweat it when soon after the story’s publication, she herself became one of the “other women.” She knew she had the truth on her side.
  But then one day in March 2016, on air at CNN, Carpenter shared a split screen with a Trump supporter, who hit her with a barrage of questions about the affair that had never happened. “Amanda Carpenter, you are named in this,” the pro-Trumper insisted. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
  ADVERTISEMENT
  “From then on, it became a full-fledged story that I had to respond to,” Carpenter tells Refinery29. “The Trump campaign issued a statement. The Cruz campaign issued a statement. It was insane — and none of it was true.” Baffled, Carpenter decided she needed to go back and study how she might have managed to better steer the story—was it somehow her fault that it spiraled—but eventually she realized exactly what was going on: “Everybody saw what happened,” she says. “I was gaslit on live TV.”

  Gaslighting — a kind of psychological manipulation where an abuser causes one to question their perception of reality through repeated systematic lies and downplaying their own actions — has become a popular term in the era of Trump. It’s the concept that helped skyrocket a previously buttoned up Teen Vogue into the wokeness stratosphere; it’s since been trotted out many times as a way to explain the alternate reality being peddled by the president and his cronies in the Oval Office. As Carpenter came to understand what happened to her, she also realized she wasn’t the only one who had been gaslit — and now she’s literally written the book on the subject.
  Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies To Us, out May 1 from Broadside Books, begins with her personal story. But it quickly gets bigger. “I realized that there were similarities between my story and how Trump gaslit Obama over birtherism, how Trump gaslit Jeb Bush over a link to trutherism and 9/11,” Carpenter says. She ultimately penned a history of gaslighting in Washington, dating back to the days of Nixon, while also digging into what it would take for Americans — of all political stripes — to triumph over Trump’s stream of lies.
  ADVERTISEMENT
  There’s that adage: Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. And yet, since 2016, it’s felt like Trump has blown a common set of facts to smithereens. How?
  “When I was gaslit by that Trump supporter [Adriana Cohen] on live television and afterward, it was really discombobulating because everyone knew it wasn’t true — and yet the story was everywhere and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The story could have threatened my whole career, and that’s exactly what it was designed to do: Gaslighting is all about manipulation and control and offensive action.
  "What I want people to understand is Trump pushes and pushes and then turns other people's response into the story — and it's a highly effective media strategy. One example is the women who accused Trump [of sexual misconduct]: Donald Trump, one of the most powerful people in the world, stands up and says they’re liars, unattractive, and that he’s suing them. Then, these women have to go on camera as everyone watches their every move and comments on whether they’re credible and believable. It's an impossible position: They have to either defend their reputation or stand down and surrender to Trump.
  "Most of them, naturally, want to defend themselves. So then, their response becomes the story, generating millions of views, clicks, and emails for the ever-expanding universe of media outlets — nevermind that Trump never filed a single piece of paper to sue them or presents any evidence to negate their claims. Trump's gaslighting would not work outside of the current media environment, where there is such a hunger to fill news space, even if it’s not news that’s worthy of space: The media, by and large, is much more reactive than it is enterprising in its own right. And Trump exploits that perfectly."
  ADVERTISEMENT
  You get into the history of gaslighting in your book, dating back to the Nixon days. How was gaslighting under those administrations different from what’s happening now?
  “The phrase ‘gaslighting America’ was actually brought into the common vernacular during the Clinton administration, by a writer who recognized what the Democrats were doing to Monica Lewinsky: calling her this crazy person, neurotic, and obsessed when, in fact, President Clinton was inviting her into the Oval Office, giving her gifts, writing her notes. Nixon was [also] a tremendous gaslighter: the way he full-throat denied all the wrongdoings in Watergate until he got caught on tape red-handed. His administration called that situation a witch hunt and really used all kinds of the language you see the Trump administration use when it comes to the Russian collusion case.
  "The difference is that Clinton and Nixon used gaslighting to try and create this alternative reality as a defensive measure when they were caught doing something wrong. Trump is different on an extreme level because he does it offensively. He gaslights people individually to take them down. Tells lies. Spreads lies. Creates interest in the lies. And declares victory. And it works. We’ve see so many politicians tell lies, but gaslighting is different when it’s done in such an affirmative way, to completely manipulate the truth and create an alternative narrative reality. And part of the reason that he’s been able to do that is because he never admits he lies. It sounds basic, but as long as Trump keeps up a lie, other people keep up the lie. I don’t think we’ve ever seen a team of people so brazenly willing to lie on behalf of a politician."
  ADVERTISEMENT
  “
  TRUMP'S GASLIGHTING WOULD NOT WORK OUTSIDE OF THE CURRENT MEDIA ENVIRONMENT, WHERE THERE IS SUCH A HUNGER TO FILL NEWS SPACE, EVEN IF IT’S NOT NEWS THAT’S WORTHY OF SPACE.
  ”

  Certainly, there are Republicans who have drawn a line between themselves and Trump. But is also seems like so many—way more, in fact—are fully onboard.
  "There’s a number of Republicans who are obviously uncomfortable with Trump’s style — but not so much his substance. Because if you are someone who believes in Second Amendment rights, wants less spending, fewer taxes... Where are you going to go? I think a lot of liberals unfairly expect someone — a Republican who is elected who may be uncomfortable with Trump — to lay down on the tracks and never vote for anything that they may both support.
  "There is a broader problem in politics on both sides, because when you have a presidential race, or any big race, you actively want the worst candidate from the opposing party to get nominated. There is no one on the Democratic side trying to court Republican voters. I think Democrats thought that [Hillary Clinton] was the heir apparent to President Obama, and Republicans were determined to beat liberalism after two terms of that administration.There’s was just no way they were going to vote for Clinton because she didn’t even try to offer them anything. There is no one on the Democratic side trying to court Republican voters.
  "Also, when you’re so intent on demonizing the other party that you actively take measures to make sure the worse choice is the opponent, you just wind up with terrible candidates and voters have bad choices. I don't like that way of thinking. If I’m asked on CNN who I want to have the nomination for the Democratic party, I’m not going to say the worst person because they’ll be easiest to beat. I’ll actually tell you who, as a Republican voter, I think would do the best job. And I think other people should start doing the same."
  ADVERTISEMENT
  You’ve been an outspoken critic of Hillary Clinton for years. Have your feelings about her changed at all over the last year?
  "I think she’s always been the same person, the same candidate. What makes me angry is that the Democrats nominated someone who was so completely unacceptable to Republicans that they made President Trump possible. What happened in 2016 — and everything that happened with her server — only reinforced the worst suspicions that Republican voters had about Hillary Clinton."
  Who would you want to see on the ballot in 2020 from the Democrats at this point?
  "Terence McAuliffe. He was the governor of a purple state, Virginia. He has some Clinton baggage and questions to answer. But I think he has the right demeanor and attitude to take on someone like Donald Trump. He’s a formidable fundraiser; he has White House experience. I know there’s going to be a lot of people running on the Democratic side, and I’m going to look at all of them. I probably won’t vote for them. But I will tell you, honestly, who I think would be the best fit."
  There have been a number of anti-Trump screeds lately, which have mostly been written by left-leaning writers. You’re a conservative writer. Your book is analytic criticism of a Republican president. Given the polarized state of politics, who do you hope will read it?
  "I am a conservative writer. But I do hope a lot of liberals read this book, as a means of understanding what brought Republicans to the point where they not only voted for Trump but support him. I want people to read this book and better understand why his methods work. I don’t want them to work. I think identifying the methods, breaking them down, is the best way of tackling the problem.
  ADVERTISEMENT
  "As for the polarization, I hear you. Our politics are divided not only in the ballot box but in media, because the incentives across the board are designed to drive us apart and to silo us. I am truly trying to break free of that — as someone who comes from conservative media, I want things to change. I am trying desperately to be a writer and commentator who will show my conservative perspective, but do it in a way that is open and honest. Honesty is the thing that is missing. And it’s because too many people have gotten caught up fighting for their ‘team.’"
  This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
  Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies To Us by Amanda Carpenter is out on May 1.

QUOTED: "Carpenter's analysis is clearly written and thankfully light on partisan politics, and she offers concise and proactive advice."
"a patriot's guide to parsing the president's lies and disinformation."

Print Marked Items
Carpenter, Amanda: GASLIGHTING AMERICA
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text: 
Carpenter, Amanda GASLIGHTING AMERICA Broadside Books/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $26.99 5, 1 ISBN: 978-0-06-274800-3
A conservative pundit tries to analyze and predict the bad behavior of the sitting president.
Carpenter (The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's Dossier on Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2006) is a former staffer to Republicans Jim DeMint and Ted
Cruz, a staple on CNN, and, as she notes on her Twitter bio, "conservative, not a party cheerleader." The author uses her media knowledge and
keen insight to try to apply some logic to the ghastly conduct of Donald Trump. Her preferred label is "gaslighting," a once-antiquated term for a
specific form of manipulation intended to make a targeted group question their memory, perception, and sanity. Carpenter outlines the steps in
Trump's approach, which include taking a strong (if often ill-considered) stance on a hot-button political issue or scandal, casting the issue into
the public realm ("People say..."), creating suspense ("We'll see or you'll find out"), discrediting the opponent ("Sad!") and declaring victory. The
author then applies this logic to a variety of Trump targets: Cruz, Jeb Bush, the media, women, and even Carpenter herself, who got the
gaslighting treatment from the candidate on live TV. That's not to mention the candidate's treatment of his opponent Hillary Clinton, which turned
out to be a bulletproof way to attack her through a strategy heavily reliant on a willingness to lie at will and an absolute lack of shame.
Carpenter's analysis is clearly written and thankfully light on partisan politics, and she offers concise and proactive advice for both citizens and
candidates on how to "fireproof" themselves against the president's gaslighting. Toward the end, Carpenter comes to some depressing
conclusions: "There is no way, short of a straitjacket, ball gag, and padded room, that Trump is giving up the power and influence he has gained
since becoming president."
A patriot's guide to parsing the president's lies and disinformation.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Carpenter, Amanda: GASLIGHTING AMERICA." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530650716/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=23f27633. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530650716

QUOTED: "For right-leaning readers aghast at the current state of politics, Carpenter's book will serve as a beacon of hope."

Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump
Lies to Us
Publishers Weekly.
265.11 (Mar. 12, 2018): p51.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us
Amanda Carpenter. Broadside, $26.99
(288p) ISBN 978-0-06-274800-3
Carpenter, a former congressional staffer and self-declared "never Trump" conservative, scathingly revisits the 2016 presidential election and first
year of Donald Trump's presidency in a convincing attempt to pinpoint the methods behind Trump's rise to power. Calling the methods
gaslighting, after Patrick Hamilton's 1938 melodrama Gas Light, in which a man's lies gradually convince his wife that she is going insane,
Carpenter identifies five distinct gaslighting steps: "stake a claim"; "advance and deny"; "create suspense" by announcing forth coming evidence;
"discredit the opponent" with personal attacks; and "win" by self-proclamation. The author uses a plethora of examples to build her case, from
Trump's famous public questioning of the authenticity of Barack Obama's birth certificate, to a personally relevant episode in which Trump and
his campaign pushed an unsubstantiated National Enquirer story rumoring an affair between Carpenter and her former boss, Sen. Ted Cruz. As a
counter to these tactics, the author closes with tips to avoid succumbing to Trump's strategy ("try to add some substance to your media diet") and
a plea for politicians to take back the narrative with more positive, truthful versions of gaslighting tactics, such as to "get people talking." For
right-leaning readers aghast at the current state of politics, Carpenter's book will serve as a beacon of hope. (May)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us." Publishers Weekly, 12 Mar. 2018, p. 51. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531285134/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9c3464c7. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A531285134

• Washington Post
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2018/07/13/feature/can-truth-survive-this-president-an-honest-investigation/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3d94367cd51f
  Word count: 3244

  By Carlos Lozada
  JULY 13, 2018

  Back in the summer of 2002, long before “fake news” or “post-truth” infected the vernacular, one of President George W. Bush’s top advisers mocked a journalist for being part of the “reality-based community.” Seeking answers in reality was for suckers, the unnamed adviser explained. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” This was the hubris and idealism of a post-Cold War, pre-Iraq War superpower: If you exert enough pressure, events will bend to your will.

  Outlook • Book review
  Carlos Lozada is the nonfiction book critic of The Washington Post. He has also served as The Post’s economics editor, national security editor and Outlook editor. He received the 2015 National Book Critics Circle’s citation for excellence in reviewing. Follow @CarlosLozadaWP
  Illustration by Tomasz Walenta for The Washington Post
  Reality-based thinking is again under assault in America, but the deceit emanating from the White House today is lazier, more cynical. It is not born of grand strategy or ideology; it is impulsive and self-serving. It is not arrogant, but shameless.

  Bush wanted to remake the world. President Trump, by contrast, just wants to make it up as he goes along.

  The disregard for honesty in the Trump era, with its ever-changing menu of “alternative facts,” is eliciting new research and polemics from philosophers, literary critics, political analysts and social scientists. (In the publishing world circa summer 2018, the death-of-truth brigade is rivaled only by the death-of-democracy crew.) Through all their debates over who is to blame for imperiling truth (whether Trump, postmodernism, social media or Fox News), as well as the consequences (invariably dire) and the solutions (usually vague), a few conclusions materialize, should you choose to believe them.

  Truth is not dead, but it is degraded, and its cheapening political value predates current management. There is a pattern and logic behind the dishonesty of Trump and his surrogates; however, it’s less multidimensional chess than the simple subordination of reality to political and personal ambition. And ironically, at a time when the president’s supporters mock liberal sensitivities, Trump’s untruth sells best precisely when feelings and instincts overpower facts, when America becomes a safe space for fabrication.

  President Trump made more than 3,200 false of misleading claims from his first day in office through this May, according to Washington Post fact-checkers. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
  Post-truth politics has been around for a while, enduring and evolving. When Jesus told Pontius Pilate that he came to bear witness to the truth, the Roman prefect asked, “What is truth?” (Some theologians think Pilate was kidding, but maybe he was worried about fake good news?) A couple of millennia later, Rand Corp. scholars Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich point to the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties and the rise of television in the mid-20th century as recent periods of what they call “Truth Decay” — marked by growing disagreement over facts and interpretation of data; a blurring of lines between opinion, fact and personal experience; and diminishing trust in once-respected sources of information.

  In eras of truth decay, “competing narratives emerge, tribalism within the U.S. electorate increases, and political paralysis and dysfunction grow,” the authors write — and conditions today only make things worse. Once you add the silos of social media as well as deeply polarized politics and deteriorating civic education, it becomes “nearly impossible to have the types of meaningful policy debates that form the foundation of democracy.” True to their calling, the social scientists don’t provide much in the way of actionable solutions, but they do serve up 114 possible question topics meriting further research, divided into four broad categories and 22 sub-groups. So Rand-y.

  In her slim, impassioned book “The Death of Truth,” former New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani is less circumspect, aiming a fusillade of literary allusions and personal insults at the president. Trump is an “over-the-top avatar of narcissism, mendacity, ignorance, prejudice, boorishness, demagoguery, and tyrannical impulses (not to mention someone who consumes as many as a dozen Diet Cokes a day) . . . some manic cartoon artist’s mashup of Ubu Roi, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and a character discarded by Molière,” she writes. To interpret our era’s debasement of language, Kakutani reflects perceptively on the World War II-era works of Victor Klemperer, who showed how the Nazis used “words as ‘tiny doses of arsenic’ to poison and subvert the German culture,” and of Stefan Zweig, whose memoir “The World of Yesterday” highlights how ordinary Germans failed to grasp the sudden erosion of their freedoms. Not exactly subtle.

  POST-TRUTH
  By Lee McIntyre. MIT Press. 216 pp. $15.95

  TRUTH DECAY
  An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life
  By Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich. 301 pp. $46

  GASLIGHTING AMERICA
  Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us
  By Amanda Carpenter. Broadside. 269 pp. $26.99

  THE DEATH OF TRUTH
  Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
  By Michiko Kakutani. Tim Duggan Books. 208 pp. $22

  ON TRUTH
  By Simon Blackburn. Oxford University Press. 142 pp. $12.95
  At times Kakutani feels a bit scattershot in her cultural references. Turns out America today, in its sense of randomness and meaninglessness and indifference to consequences, is like “The Great Gatsby.” And like “Fight Club.” It’s also like “No Country for Old Men.” It’s even like “True Detective,” though we don’t learn why. But she is more focused when exploring the left-wing pedigree of post-truth culture. Even though she laments that objectivity has declined ever since “a solar system of right-wing news sites orbiting around Fox News and Breitbart News consolidated its gravitational hold over the Republican base,” Kakutani calls out lefty academics who for decades preached postmodernism and social constructivism, which argued that truth is not universal but a reflection of relative power, structural forces and personal vantage points. In the early culture wars, centered on literary studies, postmodernists rejected Enlightenment ideals as “vestiges of old patriarchal and imperialist thinking,” Kakutani writes, paving the way for today’s violence against fact in politics and science.

  “It’s safe to say that Trump has never plowed through the works of Derrida, Baudrillard, or Lyotard (if he’s even heard of them),” Kakutani sniffs. But while she argues that “postmodernists are hardly to blame for all the free-floating nihilism abroad in the land,” she concedes that “dumbed-down corollaries” of postmodernist thought have been hijacked by Trump’s defenders, who use them to explain away his lies, inconsistencies and broken promises.

  In “Post-Truth,” Boston University philosophy professor Lee McIntyre has no problem affixing blame. “At some level all ideologies are an enemy of the process by which truth is discovered,” he writes. But he convincingly tracks how intelligent-design proponents and later climate deniers drew from postmodernism to undermine public perceptions of evolution and climate change. “Even if right-wing politicians and other science deniers were not reading Derrida and Foucault, the germ of the idea made its way to them: science does not have a monopoly on the truth,” he writes.

  Related

  Can a president who disregards the truth uphold his oath of office?
  McIntyre quotes at length from mea culpas by postmodernist and social constructivist writers agonizing over what their theories have wrought, shocked that conservatives would use them for nefarious purposes. And he notes, for example, that pro-Trump troll and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, who helped popularize the “Pizzagate” lie, has forthrightly cited his unlikely influences. “Look, I read postmodernist theory in college,” Cernovich told the New Yorker in 2016. “If everything is a narrative, then we need alternatives to the dominant narrative. I don’t seem like a guy who reads [Jacques] Lacan, do I?”

  When truth becomes malleable and contestable regardless of evidence, a mere tussle of manufactured narratives, it becomes less about conveying facts than about picking sides, particularly in politics. “The goal of propaganda is not to convince someone that you are right, but to demonstrate that you have authority over the truth itself,” McIntyre writes. “When a political leader is really powerful, he or she can defy reality.”

  The Washington Post counted 3,251 false or misleading claims by the president from his first day in office through this May, while former White House press secretary Sean Spicer will forever be remembered for the most bizarre falsehood of Trump’s inaugural weekend, when he declared from the lectern of the press room that the new president had enjoyed “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period.” But it was White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, defending Spicer the next day, who captured this presidency’s postmodernist project, suggesting that her colleague had merely offered “alternative facts” about the inauguration.

  Spicer’s lie was conventional, an effort to have us believe something specific that is not true. Conway’s framing went further, granting us permission to believe whatever alternative we prefer — and therefore to believe nothing at all.

  3:04
  Trump's team responds after his controversial first day

  Trump’s falsehoods can seem arbitrary at times, emerging in early-morning tweets cribbed from cable news or in digressions spewed at some endless rally. Yet there is a method to the mendacity, which conservative political commentator Amanda Carpenter unpacks neatly in her book “Gaslighting America.”

  If you track some of Trump’s most notorious lies, you’ll recognize the steps, Carpenter explains. Step 1: “Stake a claim” on a fringe issue that few people want to touch. Step 2: “Advance and deny” — that is, put the falsehood into circulation, but don’t own it. (This is Trump’s “people are saying” phase.) Third, “create suspense” by promising new evidence or revelations, even if they never appear. Fourth, “discredit the opponent” with attacks on motive or character. And fifth, just win — “Trump declares victory, no matter the circumstances.” McIntyre provides one more step: Suggest that the press cannot be trusted to deliver the truth on the matter, thus redefining the lie as “controversial” and empowering people to privilege beliefs that fit their personal biases.

  Related

  Stop saying the Trump era is ‘not normal’ or ‘not who we are.’ We’ve been here before.
  Trump’s birtherism, for instance, checked all the boxes. Even when he admitted in late 2016 that Barack Obama was born in the United States — contradicting the lie that had propelled his political rise — Trump still congratulated himself for putting the matter to rest and blamed his Democratic presidential rival for the whole thing. Similarly, his flirtation with white-nationalist forces is “one of the biggest cons he’s pulled,” Carpenter argues. “For years, he advanced messages that were happily received and endorsed among that crowd, while coyly denying any association with them.”

  Trump commits to his story “like a method actor,” Carpenter writes, even if the script always changes. “He will pick up and drop different fables with ease until he forces his opponents into a defensive posture.” And it’s not just Trump. Carpenter, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz, picks apart the incentives and tactics of Trump’s best-known television supporters. They were the misfits, she argues, operatives and mouthpieces who could not win favor with more professional GOP campaigns. “They didn’t have anything to lose in supporting Trump and neither did Trump in accepting their support.” The higher the candidate rose in the GOP primary polls, the more marketable and sycophantic they grew. Think Jeffrey Lord, Katrina Pierson and the rest of the gang.

  In particular, Carpenter relishes going after Adriana Cohen, a columnist and reliable Trump supporter who suggested to Carpenter — live on CNN — that Carpenter had carried on an affair with Cruz. (Cohen did so in fine Trumpian fashion, too, not accusing Carpenter outright but citing a National Enquirer story and asking her to confirm or deny.) “Associating herself with the slimy narrative posed no risk to her reputation because she had barely any recognition to begin with,” Carpenter writes, noting that Trump apologists “never let their personal dignity get in the way of flacking for their man.”

  2:41
  Donald Trump's long history of birther comments

  If the erosion of accepted facts is a process, so is their creation. In “On Truth,” Cambridge University philosopher Simon Blackburn writes that truth is attainable, if at all, “only at the vanishing end points of enquiry,” adding that, “instead of ‘facts first’ we may do better if we think of ‘enquiry first,’ with the notion of fact modestly waiting to be invited to the feast afterward.” He is concerned, but not overwhelmingly so, about the survival of truth under Trump. “Outside the fevered world of politics, truth has a secure enough foothold,” Blackburn writes. “Perjury is still a serious crime, and we still hope that our pilots and surgeons know their way about.” Kavanaugh and Rich offer similar consolation: “Facts and data have become more important in most other fields, with political and civil discourse being striking exceptions. Thus, it is hard to argue that the world is truly ‘post-fact.’ ”

  Sure, it may be that we are no more post-truth under Trump than we were post-racial under Obama. But McIntyre argues persuasively that our methods of ascertaining truth — not just the facts themselves — are under attack, too, and that this assault is especially dangerous. Ideologues don’t just disregard facts they disagree with, he explains, but willingly embrace any information, however dubious, that fits their agenda. “This is not the abandonment of facts, but a corruption of the process by which facts are credibly gathered and reliably used to shape one’s beliefs about reality. Indeed, the rejection of this undermines the idea that some things are true irrespective of how we feel about them.”

  Ah, feelings! It is a right-wing trope that liberals — especially all those entitled brats at elite colleges — take offense at any slight, lacking, as they do, the common sense and steely resilience ingrained in the conservative mind. The problem with this story is that Trump defenders routinely rely on feelings over facts to justify the president’s falsehoods. Speaking to CNN about Trump’s constant references to supposedly soaring rates of violent crime across the United States, Newt Gingrich dismissed FBI statistics showing decreasing violence as “theoretically” accurate, “but it’s not where human beings are.” When the interviewer emphasized the facts of the matter, Gingrich replied, “I’ll go with how people feel, and I’ll let you go with the theoreticians.”

  Related

  I study liars. I’ve never seen one like President Trump.
  Of course, feelings and facts are not necessarily at odds. “It is hardly a depressing new phenomenon that people’s beliefs are capable of being moved by their hopes, grievances and fears,” Blackburn writes. “In order to move people, objective facts must become personal beliefs.” But it can’t work — or shouldn’t work — in reverse. Personal feelings, untethered from facts, can morph into flat-out false statements on, say, the size of a tax cut or the political leanings of a special counsel. More than fearing a post-truth world, Blackburn is concerned by a “post-shame environment,” in which politicians easily brush off their open disregard for truth.

  Trump, for one, has little compunction running with false claims convenient to him and his supporters. When ABC News asked him last year whether it was irresponsible to suggest that millions of undocumented immigrants had voted in the presidential election without presenting any evidence to that effect, he responded, “No, not at all . . . because many people feel the same way that I do.”

  Many people. They feel. And when those feelings clash with facts and truth, it is human nature to rationalize away the dissonance. “Why get upset by his lies, when all politicians lie?” Kakutani asks, distilling the mind-set. “Why get upset by his venality, when the law of the jungle rules?”

  So any opposition is deemed a witch hunt, or fake news, rigged or just so unfair. Trump is not killing the truth. But he is vandalizing it, constantly and indiscriminately, diminishing its prestige and appeal, coaxing us to look away from it.

  Trump and his supporters often put more stock in assertions that “feel” true vs. those backed by data. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
  Post-truth. Death of truth. Gaslighting. Truth decay. Whatever you call it, the devaluing of truth — and, by extension, of expertise and the pursuit of knowledge — should pose enough of a concern on its own without worrying about the collateral damage. Except, these authors argue, the collateral damage includes the American experiment.

  Kavanagh and Rich list the risks: that our democracy is fundamentally weakened, that political institutions become paralyzed and irrelevant, that the electorate is permanently divided, and that new generations become alienated from civic life. Trump heightens the concerns, of course, but they are not really about him.

  Related

  The presidency survived the Watergate, Iran-contra and Clinton scandals. Trump will exact a higher toll.
  Alas, the proposed remedies in these volumes don’t seem up to the challenge the writers lay out. Kakutani calls for citizens to defy cynicism and resignation, as well as uphold and strengthen our three branches of government, the free press and our educational institutions. Well, yes, but little in her book gives hope for that. Carpenter encourages us to consider the underlying goals and coded messages of Trump’s falsehoods, but also to let some of his storylines just fade away: “Let go of the outrage already . . . be vigilant but don’t flip out.” Sound advice, though limited. Kavanagh and Rich consider how truth decay died out in past eras — through a revival of investigative journalism and the emergence of large-scale political scandals that “underscored the value of fact-based information.” That’s tough, however, when the credibility of news organizations and of major political investigations is itself a target of the relentless assault on truth. “We want to think [Trump’s] crazy lies are his greatest weakness when they are, in fact, the source of his strength,” Carpenter reminds us.

  McIntyre, whose book is perhaps the most thoughtful of the post-truth set, also urges us to root out untruth before it festers. But he calls for introspection, even humility, in this battle. “One of the most important ways to fight back against post-truth is to fight it within ourselves,” he writes, whatever our particular politics may be. “It is easy to identify a truth that someone else does not want to see. But how many of us are prepared to do this with our own beliefs? To doubt something that we want to believe, even though a little piece of us whispers that we do not have all the facts?”

  It’s annoying advice, for sure. It takes the focus off Trump and his acolytes. It casts the gaze inward, toward discomforting self-reflection, at a moment when engagement and argument seem like all that matter.

  But that doesn’t make it untrue.