Holding untruths that are self-evident

I once worked under a college president who was much like Donald Trump.  He was a colossal liar.  You couldn't trust a thing he said.  He lied even about petty and inconsequential things.  The faculty decided he did this so he wouldn't have to remember the lies he told.  Everything he said was a lie.  The more perspicacious  faculty dismissed everything he said and avoided contact with him.  The more gullible faculty lived in confusion and turmoil.  That was the strategy.  Keep the masses in a state of uncertainty and disorder and they will curry favor and attach their survival to those who hold  power over their lives.  He divided the faculty so that issues of academic integrity and honesty were regarded by outsiders as factional disputes.  

Within days after arriving on campus,  this president began firing people.  He got rid of those administrators who had, over the years, developed reputations for independent authority.  He replaced them with sucks who would never challenge his authority.  When some administrator disagreed with him,  he simply excluded and cut off the administrator from the administrative process.  Those administrators quickly resigned and moved on.  And when it came time for promotion and tenure decisions,  he carefully bestowed advancement only  on those faculty who demonstrated obedience and devotion to him.  He himself understood and practiced the art of sucking, which held him in good stead with regents,  who place sucking as a priority qualification for a college president.  

An insight into his mode of operation was his often repeated assertion that you are what you appear to be.  Once after some exaggerated and false claims had been made about the college,  some faculty at a meeting questioned them.  He said,  well we are what we appear to be to the public.  One of the senior history professors said,  "And we appear to be a bunch of liars."  That professor made the president's black list.  

Under this president's rule,  the college underwent serious deterioration academically.  After almost 30 years,  it still has not fully recovered.  What made it possible for the college to survive was tenured professors who exercised their freedom to study and teach without the interference of the administration.  They supplied academic integrity and continuity that made it possible for the college to operate. 

Donald Trump is a devout practitioner of this kind of dishonesty and misrule.   He practices levels of defamation and mendacity that exceed anything George Orwell portrayed in 1984. A example of this is in the matter of his use of the birther conspiracy,  the falsehood that Pres. Obama was not born in America.

Trump used this accusation to launch himself into a bid for the presidency.  Only people who  desperately searched for a reason to denigrate Obama--they did not want to a admit that they resented someone of his skin color holding the top office in the land--chose to believe the falsehood about his birth.  But then when Trump decided to state that Obama was, in fact, born in the U.S., he falsely blamed Hillary Clinton as the source of the rumor.  

When he performed this preposterous feat of depravity,  he was backed by a bunch of retired military officers wearing their medals around their necks.  
Honoring the commission of malicious lies is the depth of dishonor.  These men have the right to their political preferences,    but they have dishonored and cheapened what their medals represent in endorsing such acts of depraved dishonesty.

Trump has already brought about change in America.  Dishonesty and intellectual corruption was something that America fought against.  Now among many,  it is something they fight for.   The untruths are self-evident,  and these one-time soldiers have participated in a denial of all the principles delineated in the Declaration of Independence.   Like that college president,   Trump deteriorates everything he touches.