Let's Get Politico About Lies [ Thanks to Reporter Maria Konnikova ]

Your MesaZona blogger, admittedly, never really warmed-up to "The Donald" during 22+ years living in New York City. He was one of "the Bridge-and-Tunnel people" somehow grabbing a toe-hold on real estate while smearing his name on things he called "towers". He was outdone and out-classed by Michael Bloomberg in The Big Apple, and by hook-or-by-crook or playing media tricks has staged the biggest take-over in the heist of the highest office in America in a scale and strategy not seen ever on the political stage - definitely "a show-man" like PT Barnum for those that like it when the circus arrives in town. If that's not your choice for entertainment purposes only then we have some information for you
This is out from Politico

Trump’s Lies vs. Your Brain

Unfortunately, it’s no contest. Here’s what psychology tells us about life under a leader totally indifferent to the truth.

By Maria Konnikova January/February 2017

All presidents lie. Richard Nixon said he was not a crook, yet he orchestrated the most shamelessly crooked act in the modern presidency. Ronald Reagan said he wasn’t aware of the Iran-Contra deal; there’s evidence he was. Bill Clinton said he did not have sex with that woman; he did, or close enough. Lying in politics transcends political party and era. It is, in some ways, an inherent part of the profession of politicking.
But Donald Trump is in a different category. The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent. Nixon, Reagan and Clinton were protecting their reputations; Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it. A whopping 70 percent of Trump’s statements that PolitiFact checked during the campaign were false, while only 4 percent were completely true, and 11 percent mostly true. (Compare that to the politician Trump dubbed “crooked,” Hillary Clinton: Just 26 percent of her statements were deemed false.)
What does this mean for the country—and for the Americans on the receiving end of Trump’s constantly twisting version of reality? It’s both a cultural question and a psychological one. For decades, researchers have been wrestling with the nature of falsehood: How does it arise? How does it affect our brains? Can we choose to combat it? The answers aren’t encouraging for those who worry about the national impact of a reign of untruth over the next four, or eight, years. Lies are exhausting to fight, pernicious in their effects and, perhaps worst of all, almost impossible to correct if their content resonates strongly enough with people’s sense of themselves, which Trump’s clearly do.
Read more >> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/donald-trump-lies-liar-effect-brain-214658

Maria Konnikova is a contributing writer at the New Yorker and author, most recently, of The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It … Every Time.