The Big Lie (Yeah, I'm going there, somone needs to).
The media is not saying it. Someone has to.
Definition:
a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the facts, especially when used as a propaganda device by a politician or official body.." (Found by searching google for "the big lie")
Trump and his proxies are practicing The Big Lie, and did so throughout his creepy campaign. Trump's special sauce: he practices The Big Lie over the entire range of possible topics, from the pettiest to the most serious.
My claim is objective. I'm watching the Sunday shows as I write, and on MTP Kelly Ann Conway disputed the number in attendance at Trump's inauguration, saying that "no one knows for sure". TuckChodd got her on the ropes on the subject, and she looked caught for a moment, then bobbed and weaved and eventually threatened not to talk to him or more generally the press any more. (This is alarming imo, it shows where Trump's administration is going with the Big Lie thing, they will try to use it to break ties with the fourth estate, so as not to be answerable to the public at all: think "abuse of power").
What do you do with such a big liar ? Well, here in the good ol' US of A, we elected him president!
Godwin or not, if someone doesn't start saying it and soon and often, we'll never be able to pin the Liar-in-chief down to any facts in the future, in spite of his record of lies. His plan (as I see it) to use the controversy to avoid the press will work. Because the problem is not really Trump, it's his base. They don't care about facts or about the truth. They will successfully drag us into their dystopian future if we fail to persevere in calling this tactic what it is: The Big Lie.
Comments
a couple of pieces at the guardian
...calling out one lie anyway -
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/22/trump-inauguration-crowd...
both shot at about noon on inauguration day from the Washington monument
2017 on the left 2009 on the right.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/22/sean-spicer-inauguration...
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
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~annominous
This sort of thing isn't necessary:
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
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~annominous
We're facing that issue as well,
and in my state, just one insurance company has a monopoly on all insurance sold to individuals. The ACA was unsustainable, and change therefore was inevitable. From what I'm hearing, support for keeping the pre-existing condition clauses intact is strong.
We'll have to wait and see, but I wouldn't buy the media's fear-mongering, nothing has happened yet.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Goes for Dems & MSM too
Remember these gems?
Chairs being thrown at a caucus (that weren't)
English only shouted by Berners (didn't happen)
Clinton & sniper fire (lmfao)
I could go on, but you get the point. They're all liars, and all Repubs, Dems, and corporate media should be presumed to be lying unless, and until, what they say can be verified.
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~annominous
Berners were called sexists, racists, and yes, BernieBros
At Daily Kos no doubt. Bernie was called anti-Semitic on DK when he spoke out against DWS and supported her challenger. The old Jewish guy, anti-Semitic for daring to challenge the, then, head of the lying DNC.
bernie bros
Read TOP much? Obviously, these folks didn't.....
grrrrrrrrrrrr......
p.s. I'm sorry to hear about your health, annominous. Fucking Xenu-damned insurance fee-for-service doctoring!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I aint forgetting
that the newly aggressive and self righteous Chuck Todd was a Clinton toady. The MSM destroyed their credibility long ago, and hostility to or whining about Trump cant erase that. Every day I get a chuckle at the latest NYT email, begging me to come back as a subscriber. The latest hook is "Do you believe in the truth? So do we!..." I beg to differ.
Who's Tiny Fingers' base?
my neighbors, 100% of whom voted for Trump,( ok there may be one other BernieBro in my precinct), can't stand him. They aren't racist sexist neanderthals. They voted for him coz they were sick of getting the shit kicked out of them by Washington, and they can't stand Hillary. They aren't cheering when he takes on the press. But they are watching to see what he'll do. I think my neighbors make up the majority of Trump voters. They fell for the lesser of 2 evils argument and they decided that was Trump.
@GusBecause We need to find ways
We need to find ways of getting the reasonable Trump supporters to join with us in creating a reasonable opposition. Most of the Dems seem to be fixated on obstruction and making the Rs look bad. I just want to oppose bad policies and support policies that are friendly to the 99%.
On the other side there are a few rabid, fanatical members of the Trump base who will never join in supporting a rational opposition to bad policies. They strike me as just as fanatical in their Trump worship as the rabid type of Hillary followers were. I think they a small minority of Trump voters.
(Yesterday a rabid Trump supporter told me that if I do not support the President Trump I should just get out of the country. I had been discussing the Women's march with a Hillary voter and the Trump fanatic came over and interrupted our conversation with her attack and demands that I get out of her country--even when I pointed out that I am a US citizen. All I had said was that I was not confident that Trump would really bring back the jobs.
Right before that I had said that I was disappointed that the local news was calling the Women's march an anti-Trump rally and that is why I decided yesterday morning not to go after all. The Trump fanatic was outraged that I had even considered going to the Women's March. I am physically afraid of this Trump supporter.)
We need to get the support of the non-fanatical, lesser-of-two-evils Trump voters to join with us as soon as possible. Abusive TOP-type insults could drive them to really join with the fanatics. I would like to see a non-political women's movement, a protect Social Security and Medicare movement, and a Healthcare for all movement develop a broad active memebership as soon as possible. Even if this all started with nothing but marches we need to get the non-fanatical Trump voters to join as soon as possible with other interested people outside the two political parties. Non-fanatical Dems who can be polite to people they disagree with with need to be invited to walk away from the political correctness enforcers. We need a broad coalition of people who can listen and care about all people. As gulfgal has noted in other threads. having people listen to others is going to be the key.
It's funny...
That we might have to start up the printing presses churning out "Murica Love It Or Leave It" bumper stickers again to meet the demand of those who:
I can tell you who I wouldn't mind seeing leave America...
They aren't contributing one bit to making America Great, they are tearing it down...
I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House."
~John F. Kennedy~
Economic: -9.13, Social: -7.28,
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~annominous
Trump's lies are fairly transparent.
It's the propaganda regularly delivered by the MSM that concerns me more.
Should Trump trump TPTB payoff to the media, they'll propagandize his lies instead - even tho TPTB OWN the MSM.
There are always believers out there. Couldn't believe the number of Russia! Putin! signs at the women's march.
but who will fact check the fact checkers
the myriad falsehoods promoted during the campaign by politifact et al. render them unreliable as well. Some of my favorites:
Hillary Clinton is the most honest politician running!
Hillary Clinton was the 11th most liberal senator!
Anecdotal
My nephew and sister went to DC for the inauguration and said that they could not get anywhere near the mall. SS, DC Police kept turning people away at every entrance. When they asked where they could gain entry, they were told, "I don't know." My nephew wanted to go because (at 19) he is getting interested in politics. He did vote for trump in the end, but only as a backlash against the media's dishonesty during the campaign. None of my family of lifelong Dems voted for Hillary.
The Big Lie...
is that any of this actually matters.
Who cares what size the crowd was? What does that have to do with providing universal health care or mitigating climate change or strengthening the social safety net or improving the economic prospects of tens of millions of un- and under-employed citizens?
So the First Black President(tm) running on a phony populist message was able to turn out more people for his inauguration; all that extra boosterism provided was extra cover to further implement and strengthen the awful policies of the .01%ers he so shamelessly kowtowed to for the next eight years.
The only thing those pictures prove is that fewer and fewer people are being persuaded by the Biggest Lie of all - that either of the two legacy parties are in any way interested in improving the lives of the people that vote for them. Don't fall for it.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Amen!
It's vital to cut through the distractions and focus on what matters. Almost by definition, anything that the media focuses on is a distraction.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
@Not Henry Kissinger This visual comparison
This visual comparison does not matter now, but can be a good visual comment when the jobs fail to reappear and Trump supporters realize he is not passing laws to make their lives better. The people who were disappointed in the Obama administration will be reminded of what they lost. Trump started out his first day in office with this truthiness to preface the betrayal.
Look. See. We cannot trust Trump.
We, the 99%, must take our government back.
We've never had it.
How are we going to "take it back?"
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Spot On!
It just shows that Obummer was a much better liar.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020
one way it matters is that bothers Trump
I like the comparisons because I know that it bothers him. He is a reality TV personality, playing the part of the president, and this is evidence of his crappy "ratings." I think it really bothers him -- and that's good with me.
He was already president-elect (I think) when the new season of "Celebrity Apprentice" premiered with Schwarzenegger as the host (bizarre in itself, but that's another story). Trump is so petty and competitive that he tweeted something afterward that claimed that the premiere of the show when he was the host got higher ratings than Arnold got. No one cares but Trump, but Trump does care.
So, that's why I'm happy about the pix of the two inaugurations and even the pix comparing the inauguration on Friday with the marches on Saturday. He lost the ratings war, and he doesn't like it.
There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka
It doesn't bother him.
It helps him. Any excuse to play the anti-media card is just fine with The Donald.
Or have we learned nothing in the last year?
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Big F'n Deal
Hahahha.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
Friend just sent this meme, with the Dead
replaced by Iron Maiden. There's a case to be made for both I think.
Of course people can't afford to go to concerts in these quantities anymore, because the combination of the artists only having a few ways to survive anymore (this shouldn't include these two big name acts who certainly have made lots of money, especially the former!) and those exorbitantly greedy middlemen ticket companies who have the fuckig balls to charge upward of 15-20% for "handling" fees... Oh man, this makes me angry. Much more on that topic another time.
Promised a WI-native friend I wouldn't disappoint him as a good luck charm during the playoffs. Yeah, I'm back on the NFL train (just for this brief period), mostly because they have the ONLY team owned by the people of its city, and not some RW douchebag oligarch who as a diversion picked up a pro sports team with some pocket change, and Aaron Rogers seems like a pretty cool liberal, in the best sense of the word, kind of guy.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Your friend was right.
The photo is an Iron Maiden concert. The OP on the Dead reddit admitted to the plagiarism.
Of course, there were plenty of massive dead shows like the link below which I attended. The $10 ticket included the Dead, Allman Brothers And The Band and a week of camping if you could find a space for a tent.
I agree. Promoters are charging predatory prices these days. Tough days to be a young blood.
https://watkinsglenchamber.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/view-of-crowd-at-...
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
the Grateful Dead -- every show
ROTFL-FUCKING-MAO-ZEDONG!!!11!!!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Hey, it worked for Dubya and Cheney
Trump is just more obvious since he uses Twitter.
Every administration in my lifetime has used the "Big Lie" on numerous occasions. That includes Obama, of course, who lied his ass off. He's just a much nicer looking, calmer sounding liar.
Trump is getting a lot of attention for his lies, and it has been an effective tactic for him. Those who know he's lying aren't going to be swayed, but his supporters will believe him, and those who don't pay much attention to politics will not know what to think, or, depending on which way they lean, choose the option that fits there confirmation bias.
I don't think it benefits anyone to spend a lot of time debunking Trump's lies. Didn't work with Bush. Mockery is a far better strategy in my view. Even then, no one is likely to make much progress opposing Trump and his administration of rogues and scoundrels. Things will have to go into the shitter before the folks who don't pay attention to politics will start to wake up. By my estimate, an economic recession of rather large proportions will be occur within the next 2-3 years, but it could happen as early as this summer. Who can say.
Thanks to our lack of control over financial institutions we are locked into a cycle of ever larger and larger recessions and/or depressions. There is an element of feedback built into this dynamic process, much as there is in climate change, and no President or party can do anything to stop it, absent taking the necessary steps to overhaul our economic system that neither the GOP nor the Democrats are willing to do, thanks to their dependency on the oligarchy.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
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~annominous
@Not Henry Kissinger Exactly, Not Henry Kissinger!
Who cares how many people were there? Wtf? This reminds me of the narcissistic b*tch I have to work with, constantly comparing her production numbers to other people's. Grow up ffs!
They're all fucking liars. Now let's get something done, or at least find something REAL to bitch about.
As for the essay, the big lie has been fed to us for decades. It ain't new, and it ain't going anywhere any time soon. Welcome to the party!
What matters about it is Trump's reaction
Trump became so enraged on Friday and yesterday about media reports of smaller crowds, he couldn't stop talking about it. He veered into it at his CIA speech, instead of taking about whatever he was supposed to say there. He sent his press secretary out to challenge the facts about it, now he has his minions on TV challenging the facts about it. This is fucking nuts! Trump is obsessed with defending his imaginary personal reality, where he's the very best at *everything* no matter what. That's all he cares about. He cannot even begin to understand or function is his job. That's quite concerning to me. Trump's childish, crazy obsession with himself and disconnect from reality is what matters about this. It's a clear sign of what we are in for as long as he is president (which I'm hoping won't be long).
Different from his reactions to anything else?
Sooo, that's different than his reactions to anything else? I, like you, totally understand that he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder (was married to one, and work with one who recently declared war on me). Feeding him does no good. He has paid enablers. I don't have to be one by focusing my attention on something so petty. I'm actually much more concerned with Eric Prince being one of his advisors!
From Democracy Now:
Scahill: Blackwater Founder Erik Prince, the Brother of Betsy DeVos, Is Secretly Advising Trump
No, not different
As I said in a previous comment below, this has been his MO forever, and it's not changeable.
But ever since the election, up to and right through the inauguration on Friday, I kept seeing people, media figures and regular people in daily life, saying they believed or at least hoped that he would start "acting presidential" once he actually took office. That somehow the gravity of the responsibility and the office would reach through his TV persona and he would get serious.
But no - instead, this happens on his first day. and yep, gee wiz, he's the same crazy lying self-absorbed child he was before.
His presidential temper tantrum on day 1 over something so stupid should throw a huge bucket of icy water on any thoughts anyone might have had that he's only been acting crazy, or that he's actually capable of acting any other way or being a competent president.
I'm certainly not suggesting that you personally need to pay attention or care about it. But I do think his failure to demonstrate any change in his behavior is important to notice for people who thought or still think he might be ok.
@CS in AZ Fair enough.
Fair enough.
Thanks Deja
I appreciate a discussion where people can express different points of view and try to listen to each other. It's difficult sometimes in this medium to understand each other or fully explain a point of view. Generosity of spirit is so important, and much appreciated.
I completely agree, CS in AZ
This place is the internet exception, I think. We still have our squabbles here, but compared to other places on the web, they're incredibly minor.
I can agree he is beyond the pale
but the concept of "acting presidential" is a canard. Every since Bill Clinton went on the Arsenio Hall show, the presidency hs been continually degraded. A US president sitting with a bunch of morons on a morning talk show is a particular nadir IMO. There is no "acting presidential" any longer. Hasn't been for a long time.
Brilliant focus. You're hitting on something very serious,
which I think is something to be extremely vigilant about.
Which means putting enormous pressure on the cheap hacks in the MSM who have been coasting on a do-nothing-to-upset-the-power-brokers so that they can, like their masters, slide in and out of the Revolving Door of DC, making more money for themselves, democracy and the citizenry be damned.
Trump is a master manipulator (don't think the slick Clintons hold a candle to his goon-ba NY, faux street guy, con man shtick). Like Bernie says, he's a pathological liar. But on a larger scale, as you say, it is a core component of all RW extremist totalitarian authoritarianism. Murdoch is also a master manipulator, so is Limbaugh, et al. They similarly throw out Big Lies, then may or may not issue tiny retractions way after the fact, when the damage has been done (which is the point). This is a major topic I think should be ongoing and discussed in depth.
Best thing we can do is create citizen journalism watchdog sites to immediately pounce on these fuckers when they pull their BS, with nothing being able to settle for even a day. Drumpf's goon-isms are easy to pick out (despite the blind lemmings glued to his TV cult of personality worship of him) and refute. We'll have to do it, and loudly, to push back and a very dangerous precedent that could really upturn things and create and establish an ugly environment not unlike the Communist regimes Stasi, KGB and Gestapo thugs who do the henchmen work in defense of their Leader.
As it stands now it's mostly comedians like Jimmy Dore, Lee Camp and Russell Brand who have the courage, temerity and just as importantly the wit (forget those Neoliberal sellouts Stewart, Colbert and Oliver, they're decoys). These guys are doing amazing work. Give money to them, subscribe, and share their work. I also consider TYT to be an ally worthy of our support. If there are more let's share them so we can align with them in an effort to bolster their reach.
Good discussion about it here:
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Trump is a pathological liar
with narcissistic personality disorder. Normal methods of social and political engagement do not work and will never work in dealing with him. Trump is impervious to being called out on or embarrassed by his lies, because he believes his own lies. And he surrounds himself with people who go along with whatever insane crap he makes up minute by minute.
He creates and inhabits his very own alternative reality, in which he is perfect, always right, always the best, always the winner. Any facts that dispute his made up world are immediately dismissed as false, any truth telling is considered an unfair personal attack, and any truth teller is automatically an enemy. He cannot tolerate anything but adoration. This has been his MO forever. He's not going to change.
He's dangerously unstable, mentally and emotionally. My hope is that will be grounds for impeachment, the sooner the better. Even though I despise and fear religious wacko Pence, I think he is at least somewhat connected to the real world.
Trump's reaction...
is exactly what he WANTS you to think is important. The guy's whole career is built on reactionary bombast. It's a tactic.
Trump waves the big red outrage cape and you charge right at it, wasting your effort on frivolous meta arguments about tone and appropriateness instead of focusing on the agenda behind all the bluster.
He's not crazy. He just wants you to think he is. The more you do, the better for Trump.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Sean Spicer has hinted that he may expand the press
briefings far beyond the 49 MSM corporatist reporters, who participate in the White House briefings on a daily basis.
IOW, they may open the briefings up to several hundred reporters, including local media, and maybe even citizen journalists/bloggers.
If this happens, it may dilute the ability of the corporatist MSM to propagandize the public.
Obviously, I can support this idea only if the Administration allows liberal bloggers to participate in the briefings--which I'm watching closely.
Mollie
"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."--Will Rogers
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
We've had plenty of practice with Big Lies, and the last 8 years
we've had one of the biggest liars in human history as president.
The American people need to wake up to the FACT that our presidents MUST be liars, that's the way it works. And that's the problem.
I honestly don't know if Trump can top Obama though.
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~annominous
Good to see you too annominous!
I've always appreciated your posts since the good old days over at that other place, and I'm glad you're writing more here. I rarely have time anymore.
One of my husband's siblings is a pathological liar with NPD. One time a few years ago she called and left a voice mail saying "mom has had a stroke." Then hung up. He immediately called his dad, who said "WHAT? Mom is sitting right here watching TV with me, she's fine!" So he called his sister back and said wtf did you leave this message for? She said "dad is in denial" - so we actually went over to check on them. Mom was fine, his sister had simply fabricated the whole thing. I asked my husband if he was going to call her back again and call her out for making this up and scaring us and wasting our time. He said "no, what's the point? She always lies, then later denies it even happened." She's been like that since their childhood. She used to work as a police dispatcher and OMG the wild-ass stories never stopped. She was always the star, whose quick thinking and brilliance saved so many lives! Sometimes it went from 2 people she had saved, to 6, to 12, all in the very same story told three times in a half hour, each time getting more fantastical. And no one dare point this out, they just acted like it was nothing. This freaked me out when I first witnessed it. I asked my husband (boyfriend at the time) why, and he said the same thing, that she's always been like that, and if anyone questions her story she would go off on a personal attack against them and play the victim. It was just easier to ignore it. Now thankfully we don't have contact with her anymore.
Anyway, I've read a lot of accounts of Trump's personality and behavior from people who've known him or worked with him, and I have no doubt that he is not acting, or playing some brilliant game of 12-dimensional chess with his temper tantrums. I do continue to be surprised at the number of people who think so highly of him and his supposed genius.
Ugh, so sorry to hear about such family dysfunction
But at least you have been able to clear it from your lives. I get that feeling that Trump may be fundamentally dysfunctional. And that his personality is so strong (bullying) that he insists that those in his circle either enable him or get out.
Hope I'm wrong.
~annominous
You're not wrong
Here's an article that gives a good brief summary of him and the situation:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/12/trump-biographer-says-stop-overestimatin...
The article is brief and to the point, and it nails him and what is wrong with him, quite thoroughly.
Here's a link to Schwartz's earlier, more detailed article, if you want to check it out:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-t...
This is a consistent theme from everyone who has had enough contact with Trump to know. I'm shaking my head at why so many people keep believing the myths about him, how he's such a great thinker and planner, believing that he's actually got some kind of plan or strategy, or anything else going on in that empty head of his. He's been the same for decades, nothing new, and he does not care about anything except his fantasy of his unsurpassed greatness. He's not doing what he's doing to play the media or as part of a carefully laid plan to enact any agenda or grand scheme. He's doing it because he literally cannot help it or stop himself. His snit and lies -- er, alternative facts -- about his crowd size, his obsession with his "ratings" and popularity, these are who he is.
His handlers will be the ones who're
using this as strategy. I believe you're totally correct about his narcissistic personality and with all his bluster, what that really reveals is a person with some big self esteem problems too. That's what drives a bully, always has been part of their pathology, and Trump surely fits that definition.
I just finished Taibbi's latest, "Insane Clown President" and while much of that book is the history of the campaign trail, he talks about Bannon and some of the other freaks and demonstrated that Trump did listen to them with all his supposed African-American outreach, but when you watched him do that one could tell his heart was not in it - he was doing what was necessary to win. And handlers told him to do that, it wasn't something Trump came up with. And it was brilliant in it's cynicism. It "allowed" many to vote for him and convince themselves they aren't bigots and some really are not bigots, but by "softening" his tone he pulled those people in too, many of whom were simply too disgusted with "Democrats" to ever vote for one again. They took a chance on change, a horrible one, but we've all been lied to for so long, it's hard to wholly condemn them for it. Disgusted with them, Hell Yes, but I get the fear and burning white hot anger that made many do it.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Trump's advisors ...
Here's another quote (yes, from the disreputable NYT) about this subject:
It's not looking like he's listening to his advisors right now. You are correct that there were a few times during the campaign when he briefly made efforts to follow advice and moderate himself, but these efforts were generally short lived. It's true that DJT is an experienced actor/performer and is capable of grasping that he needs to play a certain role at times, and he will attempt to do so when it serves him. But he's simply not capable of sustained change or keeping his personality disorders in check for long. No one advised him to use his CIA speech to focus on trivial issues or act like a petulant child.
His advisors must understand that to stay within the inner circle, stroking his fragile ego is paramount. Their job is essentially damage control, and their positions are dependent on pleasing him with praise and agreement while they try to mitigate the problems his bizarre behavior creates.
I will give DJT credit for one skill, which is being able to fool a lot of people a lot of the time. But, perhaps fortunately for the country, his only goal is his own self-promotion so he's unlikely to get much done. I don't think he cares about any particular political agenda.
What will be interesting is when some foreign leader disses him and he wants to attack them "10 times harder" and do something wildly inappropriate and dangerous. Will anyone say no Donnie, go buy a new Lear jet or grab someone in the pussy, but we are not bombing Scotland, or Mexico. We can only hope so.
Is Trump a modern day Tsar Paul I?
Catherine II's son, trying to live up to his 'father' Peter III, in weird and wacky ways that didn't end up well for him.
(see Martinet)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
This problem goes well beyond the Republican base
The only difference with Trump is that he doesn't bother to lie well. He just restates reality with "alternate facts". But honestly our government has been presenting us "alternate facts" on every important topic for decades.
My sense/hope is that ever-so-slowly people are waking up the fact that what they are told is largely lies.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Say it, Sister! that,
Mollie
"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."--Will Rogers
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
You nailed it, NHK. Keeping the Press
off-balance, and running around like chickens with their heads cut off (pardon the graphic expression) is simply part of DT's strategy, IMO.
After all, he's made a fortune in one of the most cutthroat, or ruthless industries there is--real estate.
(Not to excuse his behavior, simply an observation.)
Mollie
"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving."
____Author Unknown
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Kellyanne Conway coined a new Twitter hashtag today
Kellyanne Conway coined a new Twitter hashtag today when she characterized Sean Spicer’s lies as "alternative facts."
In no time at all, #alternativefacts was on Twitter.
"We've done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."
Trump's base = Sean Hannity's viewers
Hannity has convinced his viewers that protectionism is a rightwing policy. That meddling in the affairs of the countries companies is "laissez faire" and that making love to Russia and Putin is now neo-con policy. It's hilarious to watch it happen. The only way to do that is come up with an alternative universe for Sean's Hannity's viewers to live in.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Groucho
And they've already been living in
an alternative universe so this will be no problem for them. Might take them a while to adjust to it, but all their "news" people will drill the same message into their heads over and over and over again. I can hear my own mother now and what she would say after listening to it, and when called out on it, she'd give me the blank stare and change the subject. The way of the Bagger.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Everyone knows they all lie
After decades of lies from all the pols and their mouthpiece the long dead 4th estate you would have to be brain dead or totally brainwashed not to have gone there. We've all been there that's why we're here.I suggest you stop watching the TV 'news' and stop reading publications like The Guardian.Any news paper that hires Richard Wolf, the plagiarist and hack as a correspondent doesn't get my eyeballs.
I think the most dangerous obvious liars are the Demorat's and the so called liberal press. Then there are the fake progressive liars with there nasty identity politics. I found the Woman's March more disgusting the Trumps inaugural. Meanwhile here in my Democratically governed city there was a real protest on the 20th and the Demorat we just elected mayor sicced the cops on them with a vengeance.
Who cares if the more effective lair Obama got more suckers on the mall. People showed up because they believed the Democrat's and Obama were going do something about the 'fierce urgency of now' and stop this shit. This election is over so why are the Demorat's who lost still on stage? That's the ticket put on your pink pussy hat grab your anti- Russia/Putin sign and watch that material girl, feminist Madonna. Get behind Debbie 'What Kill List'Schultz and listen to the ex Playboy Bunnie richie rich fake Gloria. That will show that sexist pig Trump and the RW'ers that the Democrat's just empowered and have been empowering for the last 17 years.
Why promote the Democratic side who's lies got exposed because they were so arrogant that they didn't bother to cover their asses but instead preposterously lied all over the place and then blamed the people and the Russian's for not voting for the other psychopathic candidate. I've had it with this us vs.them mentality especially since the Democratic feminist's or people of color they put up front to identify with all their lies get up and promote the biggest lie of all.
As a woman I find them way more offensive as they insult my intelligence with their overt lies. Trump is the perfect foil for the progressives and so called social liberals. It's going to take more then wearing pink hats while listening to Madonna or Alicia Keyes talk about what a pig Trump is to get us all out of this nightmare. They are all pigs of the worst order, the NWO that pretends that USA! USA! USA! is a democracy and that ordinary people anywhere have freaking choice.
Hear! Hear!
perfectly stated. And I'm glad I'm not the only one who had a very negative reaction to the marches on Saturday.