Hyperbole and Truth

person

I've put efforts into understanding and confronting our societies growing problem with trust in our knowledge generating institutions, media, academia, science, law, probably some I'm forgetting. A big part of the reason someone like Trump can gain support is that many of the normies just don't know who to trust anymore. Demagogues can make stuff up that resonates emotionally with people.

Hyperbole can be an effective way to garner attention, but over time when people begin to see that those claims don't muster up to reality, trust erodes. Once people lose trust it doesn't matter how much you exaggerate or how loud you speak, they just tune you out. Its a boy who cried wolf effect.

America's addiction to hyperbolic rhetoric is an existential threat to the United States.

Actually, it isn't. But putting it that way sure got your attention, didn't it?

And that, dear reader, is a big part of the problem.

We live during a time of extreme rhetorical inflation. Just in the past few days, the president of the United States has declared a national emergency about would-be immigrants attempting to cross the southern border into the United States. This situation isn't a national emergency at all, and the fact that previous presidents have made similar declarations doesn't make it any less egregious. He's also described discussions among members of the FBI and Justice Department about the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office as a "coup" — even though the provision is part of the Constitution and the discussions were never acted on. Then there's the president's tendency to describe members of the media as "the enemy of the people."...
From 2019 during Trump's first term, and the problem is only getting worse.
https://theweek.com/articles/824408/dangerous-addiction-political-hyperbole

person

I think even before I started paying attention this sort of approach never really worked for me. I'd listen to motivational speakers and rather than being inspired I'd feel like they were emotionally manipulating me. Rather than convincing me of their idea, they were sort of lying through pathos. And most poetry kind of seems the same way to me.

I still think hyperbolic communication is objectively problematic. I'm just saying it impacts me deeply in large part because of my preexisting disposition.