Tom Jones songs might be dating me. Anyway…
Unsurprisingly, Trump says Bolton is lying about what he said in that book.
This presents two dilemmas:
1.) If it’s all lies, why is Trump asking the Justice Department to sue the publisher in order to stop the release of the book due to insufficient vetting of classified material? And if they’re really all lies “that make me look bad”, why isn’t Trump going with a libel suit?
2.) This reminds me of the lying sister puzzle:
There are two sisters in a room. There are two doors in that same room. One door leads to freedom and one door leads to death. One sister always lies and one always tells the truth. You have 1 question. What do you ask them to get to the freedom door?
This is a good question. The correct answer is that we can’t ask the question. In order to get to freedom, John Bolton would have had to testify under oath as a material witness during Trump’s impeachment trial instead of allowing his more principled subordinates to testify putting their careers and lives at risk.
That may not have changed the outcome. But it would definitely have put the Republicans in a spot having to acquit the president on largely party lines after the most important and relevant witness testified.
That is not the choice Bolton made. Instead, he has tried to thread the needle allowing his party to get away with not holding the president accountable, blaming the resulting acquittal on Democrats who should he says should have pursued Trump on vague allegations they were prevented from knowing anything about, all while planning on making a killing off a book with all the juicy details in it.
If I knew how to do it, I might charge Bolton with misprision. But Barr is AG so this will never happen. Instead, there will be a lot of drama around whether the justice department will be able to squash a book because the toddler in chief is having a hissy fit.
The bottom line is one sister is a self-serving liar and the other is just a craven, unscrupulous self-serving opportunist.
No freedom for us.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
Well, solving the puzzle was not the point of your question, but since I love logic puzzles, I will suggest that the question is, “If you were to say that door 1 is the door to freedom, would you be acting according to your nature? Now, door 1 could be the door to freedom, or it could be door 2. The four possibilities are: door 1 is freedom and the person you ask is a truth teller; door 1 is freedom and the person is a liar; door 2 is freedom, person is a truth teller;door; 2 is freedom and person is a liar.
In the first case, the answer would be “yes,” since the truth telling sister would be telling the truth. In the second case the answer would be”yes,” since the liar would not be acting according to her nature by telling the truth, but since she lies, she would say “yes.” Now, if Door 1 is not the door to freedom, Door 2 is, then the truth teller would say “no,” to the question, because she would not be following her nature, she would not be telling the truth by saying Door 1 was the Door to freedom. The liar would be following her nature in saying Door 1 was freedom, since it is Door 2, but she would say, “no,” because she always lies. So if the sister answers the question “yes,” then Door 1 is freedom. If she answers it “no,” Door 2 is freedom. i have seen variations of these puzzles from time to time, but i actually think that i came up with the answer on my own, and i do not even know what the puzzle books’ answers are, but i would assume that it would have to be something like that.
Back to the main point, Bolton is almost certainly telling the truth. Every single person who writes or says something damaging about Trump is called a liar by him. All of them, but not Trump, who today said that the virus was dissipating and soon would be gone. Bolton almost gets points for telling the truth just because if Trump says he lied, Trump always lies so must be lying again, and Bolton must be telling the truth. This should be beyond obvious to people by now, but they still run up and kick the metaphorical football thinking that maybe it is different. But it is not, Trump is as predictable as the sisters in the puzzle, except that if the truth somehow benefits him on a given occasion, he will say it.He would be described as “the person who will always say the thing that he thinks will help him gain power, money, reelection.” Truth or lies, fantasy, projection, he will always say what he thinks will help him. His world is one where the concept of truth and lies, ethics, consistency, do not exist; it is only Trump the supreme sociopath and narcissist, inventing reality to fulfill his desires.
The answer to the puzzle is: “which door would your sister choose?”
Well…doesn’t that somehow presume that the lying sister would want the questioner to choose the door to death? That is not supposed by the question. So if that is not the case, then, let’s assume that door 1 is the door to freedom. The truthtteller would say that her sister would choose door 1, because the sister, even if a liar, does not want to pick the door to death. Ask the lying sister, and she would say Door 2, a lie, since both sisters would pick door 1. If it is door 2 which is freedom, the truthtelling sister would say door 2, which is the truth, the liar would of course choose the right door. The lying sister would say Door 1, the lie. So i do not see how this helps one decide which is the proper door. The questioner would get two different answers depending on which sister she asked. The question I suggested would seem to tell the questioner which is the door to freedom, as i outlined. i have high regard for your scientific background, and i think yo once said that you are very good at quiz shows, so maybe i am missing something?
Good news here is John Bolton will never hold a position of authority in this country ever again.