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Donald Trump at the first TV debate in Cleveland
Photo: Julio Cortez / dpa
That is the best text you will read this week.
It contains the most successful words in history because these words were all in very good schools.
Never before has a text been so bombastic and so clever.
Never before has a text paid so little tax.
I know many very outstanding and well-educated people who also think that this text is above average intelligent.
Also, this column has prevented millions of people from dying from Covid.
Prove me wrong!
As long as it's in the room, it's my truth that you have to deal with, because that's the magic of words.
Language can be used to create a new reality on which the standards of the factual must first be worked off.
With eight words, two people suddenly become a married couple.
In a few words, the world is at war from yesterday to today.
Samira El Ouassil Right Arrow
Photo: Stefan Klüter
Born in Munich in 1984, is an actress and author.
In 2016 her book "The 100 most important things" (with Timon Kaleyta and Martin Schlesinger) was published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.
In 2009 she was the candidate for chancellor of the PARTY, which at that time was not admitted to the federal election.
She was recently awarded the Bert Donnepp Prize for media journalism for her media critical column "Wochenschau" (uebermedien.de).
It becomes problematic when a decisive reality designer misuses this magic word and - lies.
Donald Trump, the childlike emperor of the post-truth reality, has perfected the cheating: if he is convicted of a lie, he continues to lie to make his first lie truer, but under no circumstances should an admission of guilt be expected.
As long as he does not revoke his statement or declare the opposite to be true, the false truth exists in public space as Schrödinger's grimace of political deception, in which an unproven truth and an unrefuted lie can exist simultaneously and are congruent.
In this ambiguity, you can be anything you want.
His art culminates in his "We'll see what happens" catchphrase, which he pulls out in response to any question about his political leadership.
In his essay "The Art of Political Lying", Irish writer Jonathan Swift writes: "If a lie is believed for an hour, it has served its purpose."
In this respect, all of Trump's lies serve their purpose - and more than that.
Validated mythomaniac
The recent debate in Ohio, which, due to Trump's inability to shut up, made it look more like the zoom conference of a daycare center without a supervisor, illustrated this in particular: He placed at least 19 untruths.
Almost every time Trump intervened, a lie detector exploded somewhere.
He has put his Munchausen classic, the economic situation is the best in the history of the USA, a couple of times.
I am not repeating the other untruths here because it makes no qualitative difference what exactly he has put together.
I might as well write down that he said that champagne costs as little as water during his term in office and that the Democrats wanted to abolish the sea, ban puppies and demolish the White House.
Trump started his tenure with five lies a day and worked his way up to almost five times that daily, according to the latest lie research.
The Washington Post has identified 20,000 lies since his election.
His frequency of lies also increased continuously because he never experienced any consequences.
On the contrary: When he was acquitted by the Senate in impeachment proceedings, the validated mythomaniac increased his falsehoods to over 60. In one day.
The debate also showed that our political system and its communication are not geared towards aggressive total fiction.
How do you discuss with someone who just makes up their arguments?
Biden tried his best to withstand the permanent foul fouls.
In the end, the only thing that helped was to flee into the camera, to the viewers whom he wanted to turn into accomplices in the discovery of the truth, as well as constantly opposing it with the words "It's a lie!"
No fact check helped against saber-toothed tigers
Even political lies work because we are calibrated to take everything that someone utters for the first time.
First, because we understand: Our social contract is based on the fact that we have to trust that what someone tells us is true first;
otherwise society would not be feasible, we would live in a post-apocalyptic anarchy, and / or it would be like on Tinder.
Second, because in evolutionary terms this trust in statements is one of our traits that have prevailed through heredity, as the communication scientist Timothy R. Levin explains in his book "Duped - Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception".
When two Homo Erectus were talking about the weather and a third rushed in and shouted: "Watch out, saber-toothed tiger!"
- who survived there?
The one who runs away in good faith or the one who first wanted to do a detailed fact check whether the saber-toothed tiger and Homo Erectus even existed at the same time?
Trust could be inherited because it ensured its own survival.
The learned liar takes advantage of this disposition.
This is how it is, for example, in our handling of Trump's statement regarding the question of whether he is ready to hand over the office peacefully.
Here, too, he answered with his popular catch phrase and philosophy of life: "Well, we're going to have to see what happens."
Self-fulfilling presidency
Although we know he's a poker, bullshitter, and bluffer, we first heard very predictably that he wasn't about to step down if he lost.
We hear a threat that reinforces our concern that he will not recognize the election.
By taking the claim seriously, we support the illusion he creates of the combative, strong man - who he then actually becomes in the public perception through our fear.
It is fitting that he sent all his followers an e-mail with a hymn of praise to himself for his brilliant performance in the debate - four hours BEFORE the debate took place.
You can think of it as egomaniacal and megalomaniac, but if he wins with actions like this this time too, then he may have actually perfected himself: the
self-fulfilling presidency
.
This plunges us as commentators, disseminators and all media workers into a dilemma: How do you write about someone for whom almost every claim is an invention?
This outstanding and fantastic text, which of course is also read by Barack Obama, taps into this contradiction.
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