Thread by @MollyMcKew

My new essay on the tidal movements of disinformation, how it shape the decision-making of POTUS, and how it all reminds me of the Insane Clown Posse telling everyone not to be crazy.

In the downward media spiral of Trumpworld, who is wagging who?

/1
standuprepublic.com/in-the-downwar…

Lies and disinformation have tidal effects, and we need to understand that the president is being led by disinformation as much as he is driving it. /2

Manipulative information environments don’t just move in one direction. It’s more like a river with strong tidal influence, carrying narrative out to sea and back up the river where their impact on behavior and communities is more apparent and measurable /3

In each tide, this movement in and out may seem inconsequential against the total volume — but over time, tides are a powerful force of change, evolution, and transmutation /4

This is to say: it matters that POTUS manipulates an enormous sea of lies and vitriol, a force of gravity that drives all that volume outward into different communities.

But it also matters where these ideas come from. How they find him, already adrift in a sea of garbage. /5

And in the essay, I outline an example where an online information campaign targeting him seems to have inspired him to launch a missive strike. /6

standuprepublic.com/in-the-downwar…

There is no assumed directionality in the president’s media environment anymore. Upstream influences downstream, but downstream pushes information back upstream, ebbing and surging tides of unreality and delusion about the election not being lost. /8

It really raises questions about whether the dog is wagging the tail or the tail is wagging the dog. Who, exactly, is wagging who here? Increasingly, it’s a disinformation horde manipulating a mass of elected officials. /9

And it all reminds of this interview I saw once, where the Insane Clown Posse explained that anyone who takes them seriously was batsh*t crazy already.

They were right, and this was brilliant. /10

Masses of dead people did not vote in the election.
“Out of state voters” voting in the “wrong” jurisdictions seem primarily to have been members of the military and military families, plus students.
“Burned ballots” weren’t official ballots. /11

“Mysteriously arriving votes” were a human error, not a “software glitch” built into the system by the NSA or maybe the Clinton foundation to swing the election for democrats.
There are too many completely debunked claims to list them all. These are just a small list /12

This tide of falsehoods is drowning Republicans.

And yet too many Republican lawmakers remain silent.

Under Trump, this willingness to give up power has occurred perhaps without them noticing. And it’s almost too late for them to matter anymore. /13

Now, it will require all of them to stand up and speak out and shout down the party — the party of which they have allowed and exploited the radicalization — in order to salvage the republic. 

Read more: /14

standuprepublic.com/in-the-downwar…