I wrote about sadopopulism earlier this week ( )
@kepashos59 asked “Do you think Trump is purposefully doing this? Or it is it instinctual?”
Answer: I think both.
At the same time, it's easy to see that Trump is a natural.
Timothy Snyder, another Yale professor, says Trump “naturally and gracefully inhabits a world of fiction.”
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For Trump, there IS no truth. It's all a lie.
Trump is encouraged to lie by his fans, who cheers his lies even though they know they’re lies.
See my Slate article⤵️
slate.com/news-and-polit…
He acted the part so well people believed it. The shiny gold buildings came from money laundering and cheating.
newyorker.com/magazine/2019/…
This also comes naturally to Trump. Just look at the AG NY suit against the Trump Foundation . . .
A person who sets up a charity as a personal slush fund has no moral compass, which is also a fascist requirement since cruelty is necessary.
As the leader gets richer at the expense of the people, the people get poorer and feel more pain, which makes them angrier at the “enemies,” making it easier for the leader to keep them riled.
Leaders of representative republics, on the other hand, govern by trying to improve the lives of the citizens.
For more on that, see⤵️
Fascist leaders learn from each other. They all take cues from Putin. I’m pretty sure Bolsonaro learns from Trump and not the other way around.
businessinsider.com/jair-bolsonaro… …
They use these tactics deliberately.
I’m afraid they’re wrong, and underestimating Trump.
cnbc.com/2018/04/15/mos…
One reason people underestimate Trump, I think, is because they compare his behavior to normal presidents. But he isn't trying to be a normal president.
It takes a mental adjustment to realize we have a president who is trying to create crises.
In fact, much of Trump’s success comes from his ability to control the national conversation. He has to watch, to figure out his game.
He's really good at manipulating everyone.
People underestimate how powerful these tactics are. Russian propagandists, for example, allow the truth to be told. But they flood the truth with so many lies that nobody can focus on the truth.
It's easier for the public to focus on a single lie "her emails were an imprisonable offense" than to absorb all these crimes: russia-investigation-summary.com/crimes/
Or any one of these :russia-investigation-summary.com
Without truth you can’t have rule of law. Without rule of law, Trump escapes accountability.
As @jasonintrator says, without truth, you can’t speak truth to power. So there's only power.
Liberal democracy is like ping pong.
Trump is bowling.
Every time he throws a heavy ball to the ground, people think he’s screwing up.
Meanwhile, his fellow-fascists laughs at those wimpy ping pong balls.
You can read this one here: terikanefield-blog.com/trump-is-doing…