"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." Samuel Adams

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

Lies, deception, and gaslighting

 

Joe Biden's closing argument seems to be that Trump called military personnel "suckers and loser," a thoroughly debunked fabrication of The Atlantic based on four anonymous sources, whereas 19 on-the-record witnesses say he never said it. It would also be totally out of character for Trump to say such a thing, since he has always been a big admirer of the military. The fact that Biden has continually repeated this lie at every opportunity for the past two month demonstrates the bankruptcy of his candidacy. He's against fracking except when he's in Pennsylvania...then he's for it. He knows nothing about Hunter's business arrangements with the Chinese, yet emails and witnesses say he did. Trump failed to protect us from the virus, yet he never says what he would have done differently and everything he plans to do is already being done. His whole campaign is founded on lies, deception, and gaslighting.

3 comments:

Tom said...

The only gaslighting going on is your boy Trump insisting he won this election and 30% of the population actually believing him.

th said...

Trump is an abuser. He mistreats people and thrives on it. It is part of his nature. More specifically, Trump is an narcissistic emotional abuser. And for emotional abuse to work, he has to get inside people’s heads and feelings in some visceral way.
His followers are being emotionally manipulated, even by something as simple as him serving up the barest of victories (“Wayne County!”) as huge deals and by spinning out single court wins (“Huge News in Pennsylvania!”) and conspiracy theories (“Dominion Machines! Hugo Chavez software!”) that keep their bizarre hopes up, even while requiring them to set aside basic reality. That is a classic form of gaslighting.
And here’s the thing: If you find yourself yo-yoing emotionally with his every move, then he is manipulating *you* as well. He wants you to be in fearful and anxious, uncertain and angry. Only by keeping all of us off-balance does he have any hope of getting away with anything at this point.
The first step to getting away from emotional abusers is to recognize that you caught in an abusive cycle. So, we can all cop to that a bit here with Trump.
But at heart, Trump also has all the emotional depth of a toddler, who unfortunately has a lot of power at his disposal. This means, though, that if we maintain a good awareness of this, we can effectively mom-zone him. By this I mean, we stay calm, we repeat the rules, we *stick* to the rules, and we say no. We don’t start freaking out back at him. We don’t raise the temperature.
People have asked, “But what are Democrats even doing to stop him?!” My answer is, Democrats have won 29 out of 30 times in court. Democrats are putting out the facts, responding to base conspiracies, and pointing out the math. And if he escalates, Democrats have a lot of options on the table, including bringing in Democratic governors and Secretaries of State to intervene and stop them in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
But it hasn’t come to that, and it may never come to that. The law, especially the way electors and certifications work, is on our side. They have to find a way to stop the process cold, and it’s not so easy.
Short of that, he will try to manipulate us emotionally into thinking he and his team are going to outmaneuver and outsmart us.
But they won’t. Honestly, they ain’t that bright.

Tom said...

and he proved all of this to be true yesterday