J.D. Vance seemingly admitted that he and Donald Trump have been spreading racist lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
During an interview Sunday with CNN’s Dana Bash, Vance flailed as he attempted to downplay his ticket’s role in spreading completely discredited rumors that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. With Vance and Trump’s help, the cartoonishly racist lies made their way to the national stage, fueling right-wing hysterics and resulting in multiple bombthreats in the city of Springfield.
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Except bugs are usually unintentional and, with a good team, found and fixed before they cause any harm - usually before they’re public.
The equivalence would be non-political fact checkers and public apologies and/or policy changes. The media has given up on the first (for the most part) possibly becase politicians just ignore the second.
I think a lot of this comes down to the semantics of “intention”.
I intended to write line 152 exactly as written. I intended to write code that compiles. But that pesky compiler imposes reality on me when it says “bug on line 152”. Did I intend to write the bug?
Similarly, a politician may make a public promise on the campaign trail. They may truly intend to fulfill that promise, but political reality stops them when they are elected. There are hundreds of possible reasons for failure: poor planning and naivety, lack of political capital, or even accepting a lobbyist’s bribe. Which of these cases should be considered lies?
Good point. But, while a dev says “My bad” and fixes the bug, a politician just shrugs and often doubles down.
At the very least, the Dev will explain to the team why a bug happened so that others don’t repeat the mistake, but a politician won’t address any of the three scenarios you identified.
I fear this metaphor is stretching to breaking point, but the central point remains that it should not be acceptable for a politician to lie, yet somehow here we are…