Trump lies weaken the US democracy

President Donald Trump is a liar — hardly the first but certainly the worst among US presidents. By one count, he has made about 18,000 false or misleading claims, an unmistakable sign of his willingness to deceive.
His supporters do not seem especially bothered. They focus on what Trump does, not on whether he tells the truth.
Which raises a question: Is presidential lying really so bad?
Actually, it’s worse than bad, and for reasons much broader than the dangerous confusion it has sown during the coronavirus pandemic. To see why, let us consult two moral traditions that have explored what’s wrong with lying, and what makes it so corrosive.
The first is rooted in the work of Immanuel Kant, the 18th-century German philosopher who emphasized the importance of treating people as ends rather than mere means. The second comes from Jeremy Bentham, Kant’s younger British contemporary and the founder of utilitarianism.
Kant wrote, “By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man.” The Kantian tradition sees lying as a form of disrespect. As Harvard philosopher Christine Korsgaard puts it, “Lying is wrong because it violates the autonomy of the person to whom you lie.”
For Kantians, a lie denies the agency of its victims, making it akin to an act of violence. It counts as one of the roots of human evil.
Liars treat others as mere means — as instruments for their own use. By resorting to deception, liars undermine people’s ability to make their own decisions. That is degrading, a form of contempt.
Liars refuse to recognise the dignity of their victims. By contrast, the Benthamite tradition focusses on the destructive consequences of lies. When people lie, they destroy trust.
And when trust is destroyed, it becomes difficult or perhaps impossible for people to create cooperative or productive
relationships.
As philosopher Sissela Bok has written, “A society, then, whose members were unable to distinguish truthful messages from deceptive ones, would collapse.” For example, “A warning that a well was poisoned or a plea for help in an accident would come to be ignored unless independent confirmation could be found.”
Even seemingly small lies, within the family or the workplace, can be far more corrosive than they might seem. They undermine subsequent interactions, giving rise to a pervasive and soul-crushing question: Can I trust what is being said now?
If that question is constantly being asked, institutions become unable to function well. They may not be able to function at all. As Augustine said, “When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.” Augustine also said, “To use speech, then, for the purpose of deception, and not for its appointed end, is a sin.” Turn to Trump’s lies in this light.
When Trump lies to his fellow Americans, he treats them with contempt. He is denying a central premise of democracy itself: the sovereignty of the citizenry.

—Bloomberg