There is no doubt a lot of confusion among the general population of citizens in this country about what is actually true. What the issue is does not matter, as long as politicians and the mainstream media are involved. Neither doesn't matter with which party the politicians are affiliated. They will use words in a manner that gives them the ability to say they were telling the truth, while in reality, they were stretching it to the breaking point.
Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito is a perfect example. Capito is a member of several committees including appropriations, environment and public works, and commerce, science, and transportation. She has been intimately involved with creating the infrastructure bill, including being involved in the negotiations between the two houses of Congress to come up with a bipartisan bill.
In an interview on Fox Business News, Senator Capito took umbrage with the claim made by Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and others who voted against continuing negotiations and debate on the bill, that there was not a legislative work up available to them for review. This means they could not identify what projects were going to be included or excluded from the bill and how the funding was going to be raised. Senator Capito claimed that this was a "blatant lie." My first thought was to wonder why these individuals can make such strong claims when they are diametrically opposite.
Let's just say that the Senator from West Virginia has spent much of her time learning to use words in a way that leave an impression that is less than accurate. But it accomplishes the goal. Within seconds of calling her fellow senators liars, she admitted that she had seen the legislative work up but it had not been released to the general membership. What had been released was a summary which described in general terms some of the projects that would be funded if the bill were passed. It used general categories such as bridges, roads, municipal water systems, and transportation infrastructure. The explanation in the summary of the source of funding had to do with borrowing money and moving money from other purposes. Technically, everyone involved in this discussion was correct. Capito could claim that there is a legislative work up while Scott and Cruz could also claim that they had not seen one. Unless you are paying close attention and spending a lot of time listening to news programs, you would never know which person was telling the truth or that all were and why.
The result of this creative use of words that are very carefully selected is that most people just throw their hands up in frustration, figuratively speaking, and go on with living their lives the best they can under the circumstances. They decide to believe whomever they want to believe and will often get into heated arguments with people who have chosen the other side. Rarely, in my experience, do they realize that both of them are telling the truth and more often than not both parties in the discussion are hiding part of the truth. That's why we end up getting bills that we must pass before we know what's in them; that's why we end up spending money on projects that are better left to the states or municipalities and not the responsibility of the federal government; and that's why we end up with huge deficits and pork projects. That's also why we have a bloated federal government that has far overstepped the limits of its authority.
Like statistics, words can be used to create incomplete or partially true perceptions. To me, that's just liars using words to lie while being able to claim they didn't really lie.