The Prince by Machiavelli may be presented to the monarchy`s education at that time. As a 21st century female, for me, the book seems more presented the ordinary people—the tools of ruling never changed dramatically in the course of history. The ruling class is always good at shaping a fact by appearance, even without the book. As Machiavelli said: “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.” Ordinary people`s thought seems so easy to be controlled, if they never learned how to be a critical thinker: “The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar”.
To be more clear, politics maybe never about truth. It is a performance. As Richard Schechner said in the video of “Performance Studies: An Introduction – Make Belive/Make Belief”–Performance creates belief, create reality. Politician is always making belief by rehearsing, preparing and reiteration.
To be more specific, Kolbert uses several studies of experiments to demonstrate the performance of politicians and Journalism why facts couldn`t change our minds. “Once formed, impressions are remarkably perseverant”. Kolbert pointed out that the phenomena is originated due to human`s evolution system. People naturally inclined to embrace the information that seems to support their thought: “Consider what’s become known as ‘confirmation bias,’ the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them”. Furthermore, Blow discussed his mother`s example to show how people involve folk hero`s fantasy. Here, shaping fact is not only about information, but about the whole imagery of politicians.
It is fresh that people tend to have much more moral tolerance to folk hero. They created heroes by their imagination, to make the people own the performativity. Blow thinks Trump is using people “folk hero fantasy” to relish his criminal and corruption. He created the imagery by his preservation. Blow sharply pointed out: “I think it is a mistake to believe that Trump’s supporters don’t see his lying or corruption. They do. But, to them, it is all part of the show and the lore. They have personal relationships and work relationships like the rest of us, and those relationships depend on honesty and virtue. They, like my mother did, are allowing in him something that they would not allow in themselves”.