I skim or glance at so many articles about politics every day, I’m surprised that I haven’t come across this phrase before, considering how this article suggests it’s been around a while. The word, or phrase, is “directionally correct,” and it’s another way to say “lying.”
Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley, 12 Oct 2024: The Wrong-Direction Election, subtitled “A brief history of a phrase the right uses to justify Trump’s BS.”
The article begins with an apocryphal story Trump told about a trans weightlifter, which seemed at odds with the facts.
Fortunately Jay Richards, director of the DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank, was there to square the circle. “Classic Trump hyperbole,” he declared. “Directionally correct but carefully engineered to drive critics crazy over the details.” Problem solved: Trump wasn’t exaggerating, and he definitely wasn’t just getting mad about something that never happened—he was being directionally correct.
And being directionally correct—or sometimes directionally accurate—is, according to many of Donald Trump’s supporters, something that Donald Trump is very good at. His claims about trans athletes, immigrants, and the 2020 election might not be strictly true, these advocates say, but they are directionally so, because he’s talking about a real problem, or at least a feeling that there’s a real problem.
Trump’s fans defend him.
On Fox News, host Greg Gutfeld said the same thing. “Trump doesn’t lie more than Biden,” Gutfeld elaborated. “He lies better.”
The article goes on with more examples of misstating situations in hopes the lies have the proper effect.
This is all absurd, of course, but there’s a slight parallel here between this and the left-wing cancel culture of students or faculty disinviting problematic speakers on the grounds that their speeches might make students feel unsafe, or triggered. (See discussion of that Coddling book here.) It’s not about what’s actually true or false, it about the effects of saying it.
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I need to consolidate many of the items I’ve posted here over the years, since it seems like every day I’m finding new items that make the same points over and over.
Media Matters, Eric Hananoki, 11 Oct 2024: Lara and Eric Trump-backed “prophet” claims God told her the hurricanes were “man-made” and “they” will also “set off” an earthquake
“Prophet” Julie Green told followers that the Lord told her that the recent hurricanes were “all man-made” and that the weather events were deliberately created or manipulated as a form of “election interference.” She added that “they” will “set off” an earthquake at some point.
The points here are left as an exercise for the reader.
