When announcing an aggressive policy, U.S. President Donald Trump typically offers some grotesque justification — a nonsensical fiction that is supposed to stick in our minds as a rationale for violence. The more we swallow these lies now, the harder it will be to question future falsehoods, because that would challenge our view of ourselves as intelligent beings.
This is the magic of the "Big Lie," as Hitler explained in "Mein Kampf": Tell a whopper so outrageous that people simply cannot believe it is untrue. Hitler’s biggest lie was to claim that an international Jewish conspiracy was the source of Germany’s woes — a scapegoat that could be blamed for any problem and absolve others of any responsibility. In 1939, Hitler and his propagandists spread blatant falsehoods about Poland as well — that it did not really exist as a state and also that it was the aggressor that had triggered World War II.
Trump’s big lies are almost too numerous to count. Perhaps the most versatile is that his policy focus is on curbing the illicit fentanyl trade. Early in his second term, Trump claimed that Canada attacked the United States first by allowing fentanyl to flow freely across the border. And really, shouldn’t it become the 51st U.S. state?
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