Category: Trump

Lakoff's Taxonomy of Trump Tweets

Stop allowing a greedy, childish, narcissistic loser’s pathological lies to control the news cycle

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The media is still continuing the same behavior that normalized Trump and allowed him to walk right into office with less qualifications than a 9th grade class president. They are helping Trump block out rational conversation about real issues by treating his insane tweets as real news. Yesterday they spent all day talking about his crazy “wire tapping” story! (It’s either totally invented or proof that a court found reasonable suspicion of him last year. If the latter, let’s talk about the many suspicious ties to Russia.)

Stop reading his tweets. Stop sharing his tweets, even to criticize them. Stop treating them like they matter or like he matters. He is an unhinged loser and a complete puppet of the White supremacist Steve Bannon. Stop acting like his childish rants are the most important news of the day.

Great reminder from my favorite cognitive linguist George Lakoff:

Remember: @realDonaldTrump’s use of Twitter is strategic.

Trump Tweets

Don’t Get Played

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"We need a little PT Barnum..."Last night, US president Donald Trump gave what was, by the eroded current standards of American political discourse, a very good speech. It was a very good speech full of very big lies and very cruel policies disguised as empathy.

Read: Donald Trump’s joint session address played nice for a night in front of Congress—and used a technique straight out of the autocrat’s playbook by Sarah Kenzdior on Quartz

Image credit: http://globalslant.com/2016/12/jack-dorsey-donald-trump-bad-for-americer/

Remember the future

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Autocracy: Rules for Survival by Masha Gessen is an absolute must-read. I’ve been coming back to it every few weeks to regain my bearing.

In the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself.

No more innocent liberal surprise.

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Friends, please don’t make the mistake of thinking that Trump’s seemingly random and ill-informed actions are not part of President Bannon’s strategy.

They’ll bleed the public of money, culture, education, health, and community. They’ll sow chaos and violence. And they’ll beef up institutions that can enforce their coup: police & military.

This is truly disturbing to contemplate but do not look away! Turn toward the fear (as Pema Chodron would say), open your eyes and your heart. Batten down your hatches however you can and prepare for the worst. Then mobilize, speak out, tuck your body into places so the wheels of fascism don’t turn.

Stop being surprised that Trump is doing everything he said he would. He may well be the greediest man alive. History will remember how we responded.

Pema Chodron quotation

On the willful ignorance of religious right voters

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“The real problem is that rural Americans don’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out. They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why they are struggling because they don’t want to admit it is in large part because of the choices they’ve made and the horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe.”

This is a long read but a good one: An Insider’s View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America on Alternet. For me it still reinforces the need for the clear articulation of patriotic progressive values to communicate with these voters. They may be willfully ignorant, but they are human beings who love their friends and families and most of whom do not actually wish suffering on other people.

Image source: http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/27/politics/donald-trump-voters-2016-election/

More-Popular-Than-Democracy-An-American-Coup-Detat

Wake up! Democracy is on life support.

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We’re not just facing a constitutional crisis. Diabolical mastermind Steve Bannon is laying the foundation for a total government takeover by Trump, Inc. Please read “Trial Balloon for a Coup?” by Yonatan Zunger for just the latest developments of this.

If you still think we can fight back in midterm elections or 2020 you are intentionally avoiding the facts. It’s awful, but please expose yourself to the truth. We have to move past our shock and start putting ourselves directly in the way of this fascist kleptocracy. (I’m still figuring out how.)

That is to say, the administration is testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government. This is as serious as it can possibly get: all of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts are being ignored.

[Saturday] was the trial balloon for a coup d’état against the United States. It gave them useful information.

– Trial Balloon for a Coup? by Yonatan Zunger on Medium, 1/29/17.

Image source: More Popular Than Democracy: An American Coup D’état, 9/15/15. (Warning: kind of crazy.)