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> if the administration is going to be spreading lies about the projects in order to appeal to their voters Isn't that just politics? Pick a president, or a ca

> if the administration is going to be spreading lies about the projects in order to appeal to their voters Isn't that just politics? Pick a president, or a candidate, and you'll find examples of them lying to appeal to voters.

acdha 2y ago
Ignoring the magnitude of the lies makes that comparison an act of self-deception. This administration lies on a scale which is unprecedented in modern American history, and they appear to treat it as a loyalty test where people who have integrity are identified and replaced with loyalists. The NASA folks quoted here are clearly aware that this is untrue but also that there will be personal consequences if they say the truth.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  I'm not ignoring the magnitude of the lies, that wasn't raised at all by the comment I replied to. Magnitude when it comes to politicians lying is a tough one to pin down though, its pretty subjective. I took huge issue with many of the lies being shared by the white house during Civic, for example, but many (most?) don't agree and may not even agree they should be considered lies given what we may presume was known st the time.
  - acdha 2y ago
    When you say it’s “just politics”, you’re removing a sense of proportion which serves the interests of the biggest offenders. Nixon and Obama both broke laws, but stating it like that obscures the fact that one of them threatened the American system of government and the latter deprived the city of Somerville of parking ticket revenue.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      We're talking past each other a bit here. I was replying to a comment taking issue with lies being told to appeal to voters. I didn't raise severity or magnitude of lies because that was off topic. Comparing magnitude of a lie is hard. You first need to define a baseline to compare against, then you need to define the metrics you argue are relevant to measure severity of the lies. Talking about how obvious the lies are may be easier. Plenty of the things Trump says can be disproven very quickly, or are themselves logically inconsistent.
- marcusverus 2y ago
  > Ignoring the magnitude of the lies makes that comparison an act of self-deception Joe Biden ended Trump-era policies for the express purpose of facilitating the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States. When this drove border crossings up to 4-5X the historical rate, he told Americans that he lacked the power to seal the border, and that we should pass new legislation to empower him to do so. Then they put provisions into said legislation which would have only required the actual enforcement of border laws if/when the rate of illegal immigration exceeded a set level (which was ~5X the historical rate). I can't think of a single case in human history in which a leader had so much contempt for his own people that he created a problem for them, then used their frustration with said problem to garner their support for a proposed "solution" which was clearly designed to exacerbate the problem. [0]https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...
ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
Yes, all politicians are going to pick or make up facts to suit themselves, but it's a question of degree. Putting around such an obviously false narrative is not going to help engineers at NASA and I can imagine that they'll be looking to move elsewhere if they feel that their livelihood is likely to be threatened when they're identified as being a target.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  I'm just having a hard time drawing a clear line of degree compared to lies that were said during Covid. 2 or 3 weeks to stop the spread, masks don't help, masks to help, just 2 shots and we're done, etc. That doesn't even get into the more technical lies spread with regards to how similar viruses work, or how the vaccines were actually tested and what was and wasn't known with high likelihood. The lies Trump and his people often share are themselves pretty big lies, and often very easy to see they're wrong. It gets harder though when lying about NASA may change how future space travel is regulated or whether its don't with public or private money. Lying during a pandemic may kill people, both immediately and in the economic aftermath.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Those weren't lies, they were hypotheses spread and acted on based on incomplete information in an environment where time was of the essence. Yes, some of them were wrong and mistakes were made. A far bigger mistake would have been to do nothing and wait for complete information.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      They were not said by politicians and hypotheses, they were said as fact. You'd be hard pressed to find a clip of Biden, for example, leaving any noticeable room for the unknown when talking about vaccine efficacy or what would happen as long as we all complied. 100% agree about not waiting for complete information, that doesn't exist in science. Its all about informed consent though - inform the public of what is known and unknown and allow them to choose for themselves.
rbanffy 2y ago
> Isn't that just politics? Pick a president, or a candidate, and you'll find examples of them lying to appeal to voters. Actively misrepresenting reality when holding public office should be a criminal offense. If a CEO can't get away with that, why should a politician (or any government officer on any function) can? When a president (or his lead henchman) say plain lies (such as that Canada was always meant to be a state) he's doing irreparable damage to the very fabric of democracy. We discovered during Obama's first (or second) term how much of your democracy is held together by decorum, and how far will people go without fear of being held accountable (looking at Mitch McConnell blocking a perfectly reasonable SCOTUS nomination).
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Politicians are also offered the right to free speech though, I'm not sure how a rule like this could work. It would also require someone or a group people are given authority to determine what that reality is and when the politician actively misrepresented it. I don't know who in their right mind would go into office with such a limitation, and anyone there today would likely be found guilty. Hell, anyone attempting to make causal claims with regards to the economy are misrepresenting reality as causation can almost never be shown in economics, only correlations. Even the economic data itself could be considered misrepresentative in some ways, inflation data and CPI calculations are carefully controlled for various reasons.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    > Politicians are also offered the right to free speech thoug The bar should be higher for them because of the reach of their misrepresentations. > It would also require someone or a group people are given authority to determine what that reality is and when the politician actively misrepresented it. That's what courts are for. > I don't know who in their right mind would go into office with such a limitation Someone who wants to serve their people to their best capacity. > Hell, anyone attempting to make causal claims with regards to the economy Politicians shouldn't make idle comments anyway. It's fine to say "I don't know", or "I'm not sure", or, even, make it clear it's your opinion (unless, of course, your stock market trades say otherwise). Finally, you can be wrong about something. It happens to anyone. Being wrong is not the same as deliberately lying.

acdha 2y ago

Ignoring the magnitude of the lies makes that comparison an act of self-deception. This administration lies on a scale which is unprecedented in modern American history, and they appear to treat it as a loyalty test where people who have integrity are identified and replaced with loyalists. The NASA folks quoted here are clearly aware that this is untrue but also that there will be personal consequences if they say the truth.

_heimdall 2y ago
I'm not ignoring the magnitude of the lies, that wasn't raised at all by the comment I replied to. Magnitude when it comes to politicians lying is a tough one to pin down though, its pretty subjective. I took huge issue with many of the lies being shared by the white house during Civic, for example, but many (most?) don't agree and may not even agree they should be considered lies given what we may presume was known st the time.
- acdha 2y ago
  When you say it’s “just politics”, you’re removing a sense of proportion which serves the interests of the biggest offenders. Nixon and Obama both broke laws, but stating it like that obscures the fact that one of them threatened the American system of government and the latter deprived the city of Somerville of parking ticket revenue.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    We're talking past each other a bit here. I was replying to a comment taking issue with lies being told to appeal to voters. I didn't raise severity or magnitude of lies because that was off topic. Comparing magnitude of a lie is hard. You first need to define a baseline to compare against, then you need to define the metrics you argue are relevant to measure severity of the lies. Talking about how obvious the lies are may be easier. Plenty of the things Trump says can be disproven very quickly, or are themselves logically inconsistent.
marcusverus 2y ago
> Ignoring the magnitude of the lies makes that comparison an act of self-deception Joe Biden ended Trump-era policies for the express purpose of facilitating the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States. When this drove border crossings up to 4-5X the historical rate, he told Americans that he lacked the power to seal the border, and that we should pass new legislation to empower him to do so. Then they put provisions into said legislation which would have only required the actual enforcement of border laws if/when the rate of illegal immigration exceeded a set level (which was ~5X the historical rate). I can't think of a single case in human history in which a leader had so much contempt for his own people that he created a problem for them, then used their frustration with said problem to garner their support for a proposed "solution" which was clearly designed to exacerbate the problem. [0]https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago

Yes, all politicians are going to pick or make up facts to suit themselves, but it's a question of degree. Putting around such an obviously false narrative is not going to help engineers at NASA and I can imagine that they'll be looking to move elsewhere if they feel that their livelihood is likely to be threatened when they're identified as being a target.

_heimdall 2y ago
I'm just having a hard time drawing a clear line of degree compared to lies that were said during Covid. 2 or 3 weeks to stop the spread, masks don't help, masks to help, just 2 shots and we're done, etc. That doesn't even get into the more technical lies spread with regards to how similar viruses work, or how the vaccines were actually tested and what was and wasn't known with high likelihood. The lies Trump and his people often share are themselves pretty big lies, and often very easy to see they're wrong. It gets harder though when lying about NASA may change how future space travel is regulated or whether its don't with public or private money. Lying during a pandemic may kill people, both immediately and in the economic aftermath.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Those weren't lies, they were hypotheses spread and acted on based on incomplete information in an environment where time was of the essence. Yes, some of them were wrong and mistakes were made. A far bigger mistake would have been to do nothing and wait for complete information.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    They were not said by politicians and hypotheses, they were said as fact. You'd be hard pressed to find a clip of Biden, for example, leaving any noticeable room for the unknown when talking about vaccine efficacy or what would happen as long as we all complied. 100% agree about not waiting for complete information, that doesn't exist in science. Its all about informed consent though - inform the public of what is known and unknown and allow them to choose for themselves.

rbanffy 2y ago

> Isn't that just politics? Pick a president, or a candidate, and you'll find examples of them lying to appeal to voters. Actively misrepresenting reality when holding public office should be a criminal offense. If a CEO can't get away with that, why should a politician (or any government officer on any function) can? When a president (or his lead henchman) say plain lies (such as that Canada was always meant to be a state) he's doing irreparable damage to the very fabric of democracy. We discovered during Obama's first (or second) term how much of your democracy is held together by decorum, and how far will people go without fear of being held accountable (looking at Mitch McConnell blocking a perfectly reasonable SCOTUS nomination).

_heimdall 2y ago
Politicians are also offered the right to free speech though, I'm not sure how a rule like this could work. It would also require someone or a group people are given authority to determine what that reality is and when the politician actively misrepresented it. I don't know who in their right mind would go into office with such a limitation, and anyone there today would likely be found guilty. Hell, anyone attempting to make causal claims with regards to the economy are misrepresenting reality as causation can almost never be shown in economics, only correlations. Even the economic data itself could be considered misrepresentative in some ways, inflation data and CPI calculations are carefully controlled for various reasons.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > Politicians are also offered the right to free speech thoug The bar should be higher for them because of the reach of their misrepresentations. > It would also require someone or a group people are given authority to determine what that reality is and when the politician actively misrepresented it. That's what courts are for. > I don't know who in their right mind would go into office with such a limitation Someone who wants to serve their people to their best capacity. > Hell, anyone attempting to make causal claims with regards to the economy Politicians shouldn't make idle comments anyway. It's fine to say "I don't know", or "I'm not sure", or, even, make it clear it's your opinion (unless, of course, your stock market trades say otherwise). Finally, you can be wrong about something. It happens to anyone. Being wrong is not the same as deliberately lying.