Some thoughts to those inclined to take the word of 'respectable' public figures (who are actually authoritarians and even génocidaires), and to those who have grown cynical of all lying politicians:
There used to be a concept called 'leaving hostages to fortune', in which public figures learned to avoid making promises or offering falsehoods that were vulnerable to thwarting/exposure by future contingencies.
Under the assumption that having your lies exposed or rash promise invalidated would be potentially career-ending, it used to sometimes be reasonable to operate on an epistemic criterion of "embarrassment", where we could increase our level of trust in a statement made by a public figure if it (a) wasn't currently able to be confirmed but (b) it seemed obvious that they would get caught out for lying if it were not true. I.e. "They wouldn't lie about that, right?"
However, the information landscape has profoundly shifted in recent years. (Or has seemed to for some people. See below)
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I said earlier that the information landscape has changed. At one level, it has. At another very important level, this change has primarily been in the experience of many of us in (so-called) western liberal democracies, who previously enjoyed the #privilege of feeling less routinely lied. Citizens of the majority world have for decades/lifetimes experienced a similar pattern of shamelessly manipulative falsehoods and consequence-free empty promises from leaders in the #ImperialCore.
Once citizens in these colonising and settler-colonial wealthy nations realise that, then the potential for genuine #solidarity across national, colonial and generational boundaries begins to open. And that solidarity represents the only genuine threat to the #plutocratic divide-and-conquer agenda that is as old as time and which is currently hurtling us collectively towards an uninhabitable Earth.
Solidarity or hell-on-Earth: these are only two paths currently available. Indeed, given the enormous success of this #InformationWarfare over recent decades, this is reduced to one choice: solidarity amidst our unfolding hell-on-Earth or collapse, mass death and the extinction of the last shreds of human dignity, kindness and joy. Let us each choose wisely.