"The first and most obvious thing to note about many of the most important forms of reticence is that they are not dishonest, because the conventions that govern them are generally known. If I don’t tell you everything I think and feel about you that is not a case of deception, since you don’t expect me to do so and would probably be appalled if I did."
Might something like this help explain Trump's appeal? Or, might it explain the fact that exaggerations about Trump are taken much more seriously than Trump's vastly more nutty and numerous exaggerations?
That is, I assume we all (excepting his most devoted followers) know that he makes many false and exaggerated claims, so perhaps many voters bake this in when judging whether he's a liar and either judge that he really is not or that his lies aren't as serious as ordinary lies told by ordinary liars. In other words, given Trump's political omnipresence and our reasonable expectations about what he will say, many people have implicit conventions about how to interpret his falsehoods and exaggerations, and since they judge these conventions to be widely known, they don't blame him as much as they would an ordinary politician, like Harris, who is not subject to these interpretive conventions.
I haven’t read the whole thing, but in your quoted, I find a tension between the two parts. In the first half he endorses customary reticence about certain things, which he also acknowledges includes mouthing certain standardized falsehoods rather than revealing what one literally thinks. But this seems to be quite similar to what he is condemning in the second half. Perhaps there is a different emphasis on the not saying of certain honest things, and the saying of certain things you are supposed to say (and are thus largely meaningless), but it seems similar to me.
I take it that the purpose of standardized responses to "How are you?" are precisely to enable a non-exposing response. Demands for public displays of political fealty are surely not like that at all. Rather than enabling reticence, they *demand* a certain sort of exposure ("stand up and be counted!").
Even if the predictable effect is that many people simply lie and profess what's demanded whether they believe it or not, I take it that this is in fact dishonest (maybe justifiably so), as the norms in play are ones that ask for sincere affirmation.
"The first and most obvious thing to note about many of the most important forms of reticence is that they are not dishonest, because the conventions that govern them are generally known. If I don’t tell you everything I think and feel about you that is not a case of deception, since you don’t expect me to do so and would probably be appalled if I did."
Might something like this help explain Trump's appeal? Or, might it explain the fact that exaggerations about Trump are taken much more seriously than Trump's vastly more nutty and numerous exaggerations?
That is, I assume we all (excepting his most devoted followers) know that he makes many false and exaggerated claims, so perhaps many voters bake this in when judging whether he's a liar and either judge that he really is not or that his lies aren't as serious as ordinary lies told by ordinary liars. In other words, given Trump's political omnipresence and our reasonable expectations about what he will say, many people have implicit conventions about how to interpret his falsehoods and exaggerations, and since they judge these conventions to be widely known, they don't blame him as much as they would an ordinary politician, like Harris, who is not subject to these interpretive conventions.
I haven’t read the whole thing, but in your quoted, I find a tension between the two parts. In the first half he endorses customary reticence about certain things, which he also acknowledges includes mouthing certain standardized falsehoods rather than revealing what one literally thinks. But this seems to be quite similar to what he is condemning in the second half. Perhaps there is a different emphasis on the not saying of certain honest things, and the saying of certain things you are supposed to say (and are thus largely meaningless), but it seems similar to me.
I take it that the purpose of standardized responses to "How are you?" are precisely to enable a non-exposing response. Demands for public displays of political fealty are surely not like that at all. Rather than enabling reticence, they *demand* a certain sort of exposure ("stand up and be counted!").
Even if the predictable effect is that many people simply lie and profess what's demanded whether they believe it or not, I take it that this is in fact dishonest (maybe justifiably so), as the norms in play are ones that ask for sincere affirmation.
Amen!
Er... I mean 👍👍