I’ve been thinking about the nature of President Trump’s dishonesty, and about why it seems somehow more acceptable to a large number of people than one might expect.

We are resigned to the idea that politicians lie. We expect them to make promises during their campaigns that they have no intention of trying to keep once elected. We expect them to triangulate, to position themselves during the primaries and then reposition themselves for the general election. We expect them to propose ideas that we all suspect can’t work, and to paint a rosy future that none of us expects will ever materialize. To varying degrees, we see this kind of behavior as normal for politicians and candidates.