First Read marvels …
We've been around the political block long enough to know that almost all presidential candidates exaggerate, dissemble, take statements out of context and, yes, lie. But from the start of Donald Trump's presidential campaign (remember Mexican rapists?), he has taken this [with no little success] to a level we haven't seen before in American politics.
… and Pew Research explains:
Currently, just 19% [of Americans] say they can trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest levels in the past half-century. Only 20% would describe government programs as being well-run. And elected officials are held in such low regard that 55% of the public says "ordinary Americans" would do a better job of solving national problems.
It's remarkable, the power of propaganda.
You no doubt recall the conservative Elysium in which we lived just seven years ago: a savaged GDP, double-digit unemployment, a trillion-dollar deficit, a plague of the uninsured, and an unprovoked war costing thousands of lives and trillions of dollars more.
Then came the dark times, under draconian Tyrant Obama: unfrozen credit, a rebounding GDP, job growth, a halving of the deficit, vastly expanded healthcare, and an end to America's blundering foreign adventurism.
Those, broadly, are the facts, whose reality is smothered in the ignorance of watercolor wisdom, which itself is propelled by the only thing modern conservatism knows how to do well: turn reality upside down.
Fortunately — and generally — the appeal of irreality diminishes as presidential elections approach.