I want to start today by talking about how lying became acceptable in American politics.

You know, we've talked about George Santos over the last several weeks.

We've seen the lies of so many Republicans in the context of the how Speaker fiasco.

And it's just liars and liars and liars.

And of course, we saw four years of Donald Trump in the amount of dishonesty that was

that was there.

It is unfortunately true that lying has become acceptable in this sense that it does not

significantly damage a politician or can that its chances of winning elected office.

While it's generally understood like, oh, lying is bad.

In some cultural sense, we still sort of look down at lying.

Politicians regularly lie or mislead the public without really suffering significant

consequences.

And in fact, in some cases, politicians have been able to win elections after being caught

in really, really bad lies.

How did this come to be?

One reason for this is that it's become easier for politicians to get away with lying because

of the proliferation of news sources and the spread of misinformation on social media.

It can actually be tougher for the average person who's busy working to sort through all

of the information and determine what's true and what is not true, which means that politicians

can make false statements and have them spread quickly, even if they're later debunked

and often avoid any consequences.

The political climate is increasingly divisive in partisan and politicians might feel pressure

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