Saturday, October 15, 2016

If Donald Trump Said That Pigs Can Fly

Donald Trump really does have an extraordinary ability to lie convincingly, with complete sincerity, and in a way that can be remarkably hard to refute.  But his speaking style is also remarkably easy to caricature.  So maybe a little mockery is the best way to show up his lies.

Suppose Donald Trump decided that pigs can fly.  (Some of his statements are only marginally less absurd).  He would probably say something like this:
Pigs can fly, I tell you.  You see them flying around all time time.  I get all sorts of calls from voters all over the country complaining about the pig droppings falling out of the sky.  One of them landed not two feet away from me when I was coming out of the building just a few days ago.  Nowadays I never go out without a steel umbrella.
So what do you say to that?  How do you refute it?  Proving a negative can be extraordinarily difficult, even so obvious a negative as that pigs cannot fly, that Trump has not been getting complaints from voters all over the country about flying pigs, that he was not almost hit by pig droppings any time recently (or ever) and that he does, in fact, often go out without a steel umbrella.

Well, that last, I suppose, will be the easiest because it is not an attempt to prove a negative.  All you need is photographs of Trump going out for the last few days without a steel umbrella.  But what about the rest?  What do you do?  Ask aerodynamic experts to prove, in excruciatingly dull detail, why it would be impossible for pigs to fly?  Have the Russians or Wikileaks hack Trump's emails to prove that none of them so much as mention flying pigs?  (The Russians and Wikileaks seem uninterested in cooperating).  Interview everyone who has accompanied Trump out of a building lately to see if any of them saw any pig droppings narrowly miss him?

And doesn't the mere fact that he has people investigating any refuting anything so ridiculous mean that he has won already?

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