Thread by @Nick_Carmody

@francescatututu There’s an inherent problem with the political climate/structure that makes Trump difficult to deal with: He is a hyper-exaggerated manifestation of everything that already existed in politics. Politicians are dishonest? Trump is pathologically dishonest……1/

@francescatututu ……Politicians are self-interested? Trump is pathologically self-interested. Politicians are ego driven? Trump is pathologically ego-driven. Politicians are corrupt? Trump’s corruption is unrivaled…. 2/

@francescatututu Regardless of whether it is by calculated design (sociopathy)…. or by reflexive/reactive, self-preservational, reality/history revising gaslighting…..we often see a three-part dynamic where 1) Trump seizes upon a weakness, issue, or occurrence,…..3/

@francescatututu ….2) engages in that very same action/behavior in an exponentially more severe way even while simultaneously drawing attention to & criticizing others for the behavior he’s engaging in…and then 3) claims he’s exposing & solving the problem that he is actually exacerbating. 4/

@francescatututu This not only deflects attention from his own egregious actions, but it creates confusion around the action so that it becomes difficult for people to know or understand what to believe. He did this with the “Fake News” phenomenon where….5/

@francescatututu ....1) he took a relatively standardized/accepted level of political dishonesty to a shameless, pathological level not previously seen, 2) while simultaneously claiming that everything/everyone else is lying (“Fake News”),….6/

@francescatututu ….and then 3) championed himself as a savior who will save everyone from the *lies* of the “enemy of the people” (press). This helps to self-servingly insulate him and his pathological dishonesty from exposure…. 7/

@francescatututu ….by confusing and/or providing pretextual cover for the less sophisticated, the willfully ignorant, and the intellectually dishonest. I analyzed this dynamic with some of Dan Crenshaw’s recent gaslighting comments about, well….gaslighting: 8/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1143150754321981441

@francescatututu This process relies on the elimination of both nuance & an awareness of *matters of degree*. Basically, the process relies on the masses either possessing Trump’s inability to see nuance, abstraction, shades of grey….instead living in a binary, black/white, *absolute* world….9/

@francescatututu ….or it relies on them being convinced with sleight-of-hand, gaslighting rhetoric that we are all living in Trump’s delusionally-manufactured worldview. 10/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1130439258647420928

@francescatututu ....The end result is that any inaccurate/dishonest statement by an opponent (politician/press) becomes *prima facie* evidence that everything/everyone is inaccurate/dishonest. 11/

@francescatututu This creates two perceptions, both of which benefit Trump: 1) an “aha” moment, where he is vindicated as the lone crusading exposer of universal “Fake News”…..12/

@francescatututu ...or 2), a combination of: everything is a lie, therefore nothing is a lie….that lying is a necessary tactic to win or to compete against evil enemies (Libs/media) who are lying,…or that they’re in a Darwinian fight for survival where lying is a law of the political jungle.13/

@francescatututu ....Incidentally, for the most part, you can interchangeably swap out “Swamp” or “Corruption”, in the above analysis about excusing/accepting/normalizing “lying”. 14/

@francescatututu Bringing this back to your question, I think it’s incredibly important that anyone opposing Trump has to be cognizant of the above dynamic and the effect it has on people trying to figure out what the hell is going on, what is true, what they can believe. 15/

@francescatututu ....Opponents have to literally be almost perfect in their honesty, factual accuracy, and character because it doesn’t matter if Trump lies 99/100 times, or if Trump’s opponent is accurate 99/100 times,….16/

@francescatututu ….because the second the opponent slips up, Trump’s spring-loaded attack machine will pounce on the mistake and use it create a manipulative, gaslighting, moral equivalency argument that confuses, exhausts, and demoralizes the masses 17/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1123741907178467328

@francescatututu In my own personal dealings with a #Narcissist, this was essentially the challenge I faced. When my daughter was six years old she told me: “Daddy, I know mommy (a Narcissist) lies, but mommy says you lie so I feel like I can’t believe either of you”. 18/

@francescatututu Aside from that being an incredibly devastating/crushing experience/reality for my daughter, it also put me in the position of having to practically be perfect. It wasn’t enough to just not lie (which I don’t)….19/

@francescatututu ….but I also couldn’t be inaccurate/wrong, or say or doing anything that would cause my daughter to second guess everything I say, do, or am.....20/

@francescatututu The situation was so dire that I couldn’t even endorse Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny because I couldn’t risk my daughter interpreting the realization of them not existing, and my endorsement of them, as evidence that she needed to question my honesty in other areas.....21/

@francescatututu Basically, I was terrified of my daughter thinking that if I *lied* about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, then “mommy was right”, and that she had to question whether I lying about other things. The entire #Narcissistic experience is completely surreal. 22/

@francescatututu Bringing this back to defeating Trump, every opponent has to walk an incredibly fine line. The normal “standardized/accepted level of political dishonesty”, as described above, is no longer acceptable. They have to flawlessly “walk the talk”. 23/

@francescatututu ...Another thing that I think is incredibly important is that the opposing candidate has to be extremely prepared so that they can fact check Trump, and recall (either mentally or with notes) exact instances of Trump lying or contradicting himself....24/

@francescatututu #Narcissists live in an alternate reality and rely on the sheer volume of pathologically dishonest and delusional statements/actions to paralyze an opponent, either because the volume of targets (lies) prevents you from focusing on and combating just one…..25/

@francescatututu ….or because the lies/delusions come at such a dizzying pace, that by the time you’ve pinned one lie down, they’ve muddied the waters with a dozen more lies/delusions,…… 26/

@francescatututu ….which forces you to let go of the lie you’ve focused on (pinned down) just to keep up with the argument…..which often feels compulsory because since the new lies often attack your character, “keeping up with the argument” involves defending yourself and your character. 27/

@francescatututu Again, using my own exhausting experience,...I not only kept binders of documentation to counter the pathological dishonesty, but during engagements I constantly remind her everything I say is documentation-supported (which infuriates her b/c it pierces her revised history). 28/

@francescatututu The downside is that nearly every argument…..nearly every interaction….turns into a research project where I’m pulling up and citing previous emails/texts/voice messages, etc.,….29/

@francescatututu ….but having the documentation helps to somewhat keep the interaction anchored in reality,…. and having *actual* reality.....especially when documented in their own words.....constantly piercing their alternate reality…. *can* be very unsettling to them. 30/

@francescatututu In the case of a candidate attempting to “battle/weaken” Trump, we may be way past the point of any of this working or mattering, but to the extent it can, the candidate will have to be able to recall or pull up facts/quotes/stats in real time to have any effectiveness. 31/