I know we’re not supposed to get too riled by any one of the multitude of dumb remarks and false statements that spew forth from Donald Trump’s firehose of inanity. He’s been lying and saying stupid stuff for decades. As you probably know, the Washington Post recorded 30,573 misleading or untrue comments he uttered while president. That’s an average of over 20 a day. Remember: The newspaper fact-checked only a slice of his verbal output, not every word. By now, most of those who are not members of the Trump cult realize Dear Leader is an inveterate prevaricator, a blowhard con man who routinely fabricates and deludes and who doesn’t appear to even recognize the existence of such a thing called truth.

But there’s an assertion he made the other day that prompted me to once again ponder how his diehard supporters contend with his never-ending ultra-disingenuousness. On Saturday, Trump spoke in Dallas at the annual convention of the beleaguered National Rifle Association—which in February was found liable in a civil corruption case—and accepted its endorsement. (Fraud to fraud.) He said many idiotic things. As music tied to the bonkers QAnon movement played, Trump wailed that the United States was a “failing nation” with an economy that’s becoming a “cesspool of ruin.” He called the insurrectionist rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 “hostages” who have been “unfairly imprisoned” for merely mounting a “protest.” He pledged to withhold federal funds from any school in the nation with a vaccine or mask mandate. (Make Measles Great Again!) He claimed he was a “better physical specimen” as president than Barack Obama. He referred to himself as “a freakin’ genius.”

Yeah, it was the usual megalomaniacal and dishonest crap from Trump. What caught my attention was this comment, which drew applause from the audience:

And honestly, there's been no president since Abraham Lincoln—and perhaps, in a certain way, including Abraham Lincoln—but there’s been no president since Abraham Lincoln that has done more for the Black individual in this country than President Donald J. Trump. There’s been nobody. Not even close.

The sheer absurdity of this statement—to suggest that “in a certain way” he has helped Black Americans more than the fellow who waged a war to end slavery and who signed the Emancipation Proclamation—might lead one to simply dismiss it out of hand. Yet let’s think about it for a moment—and not just from Trump’s egotistical and fantastical perspective but from that of his devoted fans who hang on his every word.

First off, of course, he’s wildly wrong. You know the yadda, yadda, yadda on this. President Harry Truman desegregated the US military. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act. Arguing the point is ridiculous, but what did Trump do? He signed a criminal reform bill that passed with bipartisan veto-proof majorities and led to releases or sentence reductions for several thousand federal inmates. (Its rehabilitation provisions were not effectively implemented.) While in the White House, he touted his support for historically Black colleges and universities, when all he did was to continue the same level of federal funding for these institutions. But he weakened regulations aimed at thwarting housing discrimination, and he tried to kill Obamacare, which would have left millions of Black Americans with no health insurance.

On the campaign trail, Trump points to the drop in the Black unemployment rate that occurred while he was president. Joblessness among Black Americans during his administration did continue a steady decline that began in the Obama presidency. Following the economic implosion of 2007–2008, the level of Black unemployment shot up to 16.8 percent in March 2010. It then dropped to 7.5 by the end of the Obama years. During Trump’s stint in the White House, it fell a little further to 5.3 percent by August 2019 and ticked up to 6.4 percent before the Covid pandemic hit and the rate soared to 16.9 percent. Under Biden, Black unemployment decreased to a record low of 4.8 percent in April 2023. It has since risen a bit to 5.6 percent last month. The bottom line: Trump’s performance on this front—if you believe a president deserves credit or blame for such things—is not exceptional when compared to Barack Obama or Joe Biden.

And then there’s Trump’s own notorious personal racism. His family business’s discriminatory practices. His demonization of the Central Park Five. His slew of racist comments over the years. It’s a long history.

Consequently, it is crazy talk for him to declare—as he has repeatedly—that he’s been the best president for Black folks. I can understand why he spouts this ludicrous line. It demonstrates he’s so audacious he’ll say anything. And a key part of his long-standing PR strategy is to defend against attacks and criticisms by proclaiming the opposite, no matter how nutso it may sound. (No, you’re the threat to democracy!) His motivations for chucking this garbage are obvious.

Here's what interests me: What does his devoted audience think when they hear him make this nonsensical declaration? There are several possibilities.

They believe it. If that’s the case, these people are rather ignorant. Sorry, there’s no nice way to say that. They don’t know history. Thus, Trump can write whatever he wants on a blank slate for them, and that’s good enough; they buy it. They want to believe Trump is the greatest of all time—for probably a host of political and psychological reasons. He can probably tell them anything, and they will accept it. See the Big Lie.

They see it as rhetoric. They don’t look to Trump for accuracy. They want something else out of him. The point is for Trump to be bold and boastful, and they relish that brashness. They embrace his exaggerations—no matter their falsity—because they are entertaining and, for them, a sign of the strongman strength for which they yearn. Trump can get away with saying whatever the eff he wants, and that’s admirable. It’s part of his schtick and appeal. It demonstrates his power.

They don’t care about the truth. Trump supporters want him loud and angry, not hampered by pesky facts and reality. Especially if he trolls the damn libs, the Democrats, the media, and anyone else they deem the enemy or the source of their grievances and resentments (legitimate or not). The truth is for suckers. They don’t want a leader who plays by the rules. Trump’s say-whateverism is an asset. As any good autocrat-wannabe, he appears to believe that he can define (or at least bend) reality with his self-serving assertions, and his followers are in on it. They like the lies. They like him for lying.

Certainly, there’s overlap between these categories, and other explanations likely exist. (Feel free to send me your ideas.) A political leader’s ability to lie to his flock (and the rest of us) constantly and brazenly and not have to fret about consequences is a feature of fascism. Sure, it can happen in non-fascist circumstances. But this is a key element of authoritarianism: destroying the line—and the significance of the line—between truth and falsehood. The fact that Trump does this in such a preposterous fashion and, more important, that tens of millions of Americans are jazzed (or not put off) by it remains a five-alarm warning for the future of American democracy. After all these years of Trump lying, it’s easy to be inured to his ceaseless slinging of falsehoods, large and small. But this never-ending practice—and its embrace by millions—is more worrisome the longer it goes on.

I’m not the first political observer to look at Trump and recall a line attributed to Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” His statement about Lincoln is about as cuckoo as it gets. If you believe that, you will believe that the 2020 election was stolen from him, that Biden, the Democrats, the liberals, the Deep State, the media are plotting against him and against you—and that they are out to purposefully destroy the America you love. And if that’s the case, what should you do? Drastic times demand drastic measures, right?

The more outlandish are Trump’s lies, the more his dissembling shows us that a large portion of Americans either don’t care about the truth or are eager and willing to accept a perverted and false vision of reality. The absurdity of his fibs and prevarications are a measure of how deep in trouble this country is. We become accustomed to them at our peril.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

There’s a silly game some of us on social media play. When Trump does something wrong or foolish, we say, Imagine what the reaction would be if Joe Biden did this. I know that generally we’re not supposed to make fun of someone’s physical appearance. But look at the photo in the tweet below that came from a Trump fundraising video shot at his New York City trial. If Biden went out in public looking like this, Fox News would run wall-to-wall coverage screaming that he was too demented to competently apply bronzer. Yet for Trump, whose supposed virility is often hailed by his supporters, it’s no prob.

“Lessons from a Mass Shooter’s Mother,” Mark Follman, Mother Jones. Remember that college kid who 10 years ago went on a killing spree in Santa Barbara, California, in which he stabbed three students to death, fatally shot three other people, and wounded 14 others before blowing his brains out? He left behind a so-called manifesto full of misogyny and after the horror was widely described as a leader of a violent movement made up of aggrieved men who call themselves “involuntary celibates,” or “incels.” It was an awful episode, one in the unending chain of senseless mass shootings that seem to blend into each other. The storyline was rather pat: a loner loser who hates women because he can’t score snaps and seeks vengeance in blood and death. A decade later, my Mother Jones colleague Mark Follman has done a deep dive into the case and upturned many of the easy assumptions it generated.

In a masterful (and long) piece of explanatory and narrative journalism, Follman focuses on Chin Rodger, the mother of Elliot Rodger, the killer. She has spent the years since that horrific day working with violence prevention experts to both reach a better understanding of her son’s actions and develop strategies for preventing other such attacks. It’s a heartbreaking tale. Chin did much as a parent to address the assorted psychological issues that burdened her son from an early age. There was counseling. There were doctors. There were check-ins. And none of this worked. Still, she and the experts with whom she has been collaborating believe a continuing examination of this case can yield valuable data for devising interventionist strategies for averting similar rampages.

Mark writes, “[F]rom the start, this tragedy has been wrongly mythologized in the media and academia and poorly understood by the public, its lessons for prevention buried. The voluminous case evidence casts light on warning signs, the complicated role of mental illness, and other keys to effective intervention. Elliot’s behaviors leading up to the attack also make clear how the common portrayal of mass shooters is misguided and undermines the potential to stop them: They are not inscrutable monsters who suddenly ‘snap’ and attack impulsively, but instead are troubled people who spiral into crisis—and whose brewing plans for violence can be detected, explained, and potentially prevented.” He adds, “After mass shootings, we frequently hear that mental health treatment is paramount, a generalized assertion often used to deflect from debate over gun laws. But as Elliot’s case makes evident, conventional therapy and counseling are no magic solution when it comes to detecting and preventing planned violence.”

The author of Trigger Points, a book about preventing mass shootings using behavioral threat assessment, Mark writes perceptively and sensitively about this horrible crime, its victims, the perpetrator, and Chin’s endeavors. “I hope my hindsight will be others’ foresight,” Chin tells him. With efforts like hers—and articles like this one—the chances of preventing future gun massacres improve.

If you prefer to listen than read, there’s a wonderful Reveal podcast based on this article.

Ripley. I don’t believe I have ever experienced a television series as visually engaging as Netflix’s Ripley. Filmed in black-and-white, every shot is exquisitely composed. It’s as if Gordon Parks was the director and Ansel Adams the cinematographer of this project. Across all eight episodes, the imagery is constantly and deliciously mesmerizing. The cliché holds: a veritable feast for the eyes. Oh yeah, there’s a plot: A small-time bunko artist who bilks modest payments from medical patients in New York uses his talents—and murder—to become an ambitious identity thief in order to live the high life in Italy in the early 1960s.

Ripley, based on the often-adapted Patricia Highsmith novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, was created, written, and directed by Steve Zaillian, the screenwriter of Schindler’s List and Moneyball and creator of HBO’s marvelous crime series The Night Of. He casts this telling of Tom Ripley’s story in black-and-white to imbue a classic noir feel to the saga, as he dwells on the beautiful details of Italianate architecture, be it in Atrani, Rome, Naples, or Palermo. The geometric design of each scene suggests a fundamental order in the world that is profoundly challenged by the conscienceless Ripley, played superbly by Andrew Scott.

The narrative is well-known. Richard “Dickie” Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), the son of a wealthy shipbuilder in New York, has assumed a life of leisure—painting, sailing, swimming—in a quaint Italian town with girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning), an aspiring photographer and writer. Dickie’s father asks Tom—who has a tenuous connection to Dickie—to travel to Italy (all expenses paid!) to persuade his son to return to the States. Tom, living in a flophouse and barely getting by on his petty cons, takes the assignment, but once in Italy, he decides he’d rather be Dickie that fulfill his mission. Thus begins his ingenious plan to get rid of Dickie, assume his identity (and bank account), and enjoy la dolce vita. The series evolves into a suspenseful cat-and-mouse chase, as Tom repeatedly comes close to being found out, but each time cleverly eludes exposure.

It’s to Zaillian’s credit that he takes familiar material and renders it fresh with his austere depiction of Ripley—a sociopath, a psychopath? it’s hard to tell—within a gray-scale universe. Some might view the series as too highly stylized, but I found Ripley compelling and entrancing. Noir has never looked so good.

May 18, 2024: Here come the Russians, again; Sonya Cohen Cramer’s You’ve Been a Friend to Me; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Eric Trump); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

May 14, 2024: Paul Manafort and the metrics of shamelessness; 3 Body Problem’s obvious but understated tie to climate change; Neil Young and Crazy Horse keep a promise; and more.

May 11, 2024: America is broken, and the media ain’t helping; my fascinating trip to Japan; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Laura Ingraham); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

May 7, 2024: Modern-day lessons from Hiroshima; Ed Zwick’s Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions; the virtues of Tokyo Vice; and more.

May 1, 2024: From the Our Land archive: Donald Trump, stochastic terrorist; and more.

April 24, 2024: From the Our Land archive: Take a walk; and more.

April 20, 2024: Ari Berman’s new book explains the GOP's grand plan: minority rule; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Sen. Tom Cotton and Kari Lake); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

April 16, 2024: Should there be presidential debates?; Peter Morgan’s Patriots lacks that ol’ Russian drama; the Beckham documentary scores on the fields of sports and celebrity; and more.

April 13, 2024: Sleepwalking toward the 2024 election; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Woody Johnson); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

April 9, 2024: A special Our Land report: Everything you wanted to know about Trump’s porn-star-hush-money case; and more.