I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, obviously it's a bad thing in the short term. I'm sure the current administration will continue to lie in more egregious ways. For example, if there were no clear bystander videos, would the DHS be releasing doctored bodycam footage to show Alex Pretti pulling his gun and trying to shoot ICE officers? Does that sound far-fetched? It's technically feasible. It might seem too big and blatant a lie, but that lie has already been told in words from the DHS and Trump administration. Why not embellish it further?
And of course it's enormously dangerous because no matter how blatant the lies are, there are many people who will accept them at face value, because they are too uneducated, or too locked into the "us and them" mentality to ever doubt the story that their team is selling.
So how could it be a good thing? Well, if the USA manages to rid itself of this cancer, the Trump administration will serve as irrefutable proof that government institutions cannot be considered intrinsically trustworthy, or relied on to act in good faith. There needs to be checks and balances like never before. That was always true, but knowing it and being able to act on it are two different things. The Trump administration's eagerness to lie, cheat and cause suffering, even in the most clumsy and blatant ways, shines a clear light on dangers that were already there. It is an exemplary model of the abuse of power, and I hope that one day we will be in a position to take lessons from it. Maybe I'm being overoptimistic. It seems like the lessons learned from Nazi Germany were mostly the "how to do this" kind. But there is a chance to make things better here, not just better than they are now but better than they were before.
