Election season frequently bring new words into the vocabulary. For 2016 I find that a new one is required after the election.
In 1969 RMD popularized silent majority to describe the people he thought had voted for him and the those he hoped would vote for him in ’72. In many respects this is the same demographic that became a vocal minority when DJT ran his campaign. (Avoiding names will make it less likely that J’s minions will find this obscure blog. Those supporters have shown themselves to be a major source of harassment, all the way up to death threats.)
But the feature of the campaign that astounded me the most was the number of J’s contradictions. And, they continue with his cabinet nominees that violate his tweets and speeches. So my term for this group is fact-resistant people, or if you like alliteration, the fact-free faction.
As supporting evidence I suggest looking at J’s tweets on his own tweets and comments about them. That was sarcasm. Or He didn’t mean what he said. Or, referencing that left-wing publication, the Wall Street Journal, “The contradictions of Donald Trump….” Or consider the attacks he made on The Hillary for accepting fees from Goldman Sachs and his proposed appointment of Goldman Sachs Number 2 Executive as his economic adviser.
If one applies Higbie’s Law, “If a politician says something it’s a lie,” but it seems unlikely to apply in this case. Telling a lie implies volition to dissemble. It is doubtful that J’s knows what he’s saying. Logorrhoea, or in J’s case textorrhoea, is more likely a symptom of fact-resistance than intentional falsification.
Fact-resistant people are not deplorable, at least many of them aren’t, but they did vote their fears, not their wallets or interests. Michael Shermer has an interesting column on typical reactions to conflicts between facts and worldviews in the January, 2017, Scientific American. For a satiric comment, check out John Pavlovitz’s Seussian poem.