In social media dialogs with dedicated Trump supporters, I have got to hand it to Trump. He is a master of mind control. and he is the master of a universe he himself helps shape. What is reality has become what media outlet a person watches exclusively. That is the single most important factor causing such a sharply divided nation. There seems to be an Earth A and an Earth B existing side by side. Reality to him is what FOX and Friends and Hannity broadcast, and the lines are blurred with who is influencing whom. Trump if anything is a TV-shaped and shaping creature. He is where he is because of his TV stardom in an echo chamber of his making..That he watches FOX hours a day is documented in his tweets, his former staff, and his own comments and his using them as his kitchen cabinet to shape public policy. That is the reality he wants for his followers to perceive, even if he himself knows otherwise.
Post-Nov. 3, the Trumpists still promote Earth B, defying the election results in spite of no evidence of fraud..and his attorneys have been laughed out of court. Nonetheless, the propaganda machines are hard at work drumming up social media and "news" stories that are bogus, purporting to show evidence of fraud...and debunked by ABC news showing how they have tried to do this: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/election-2020-debunking-false-misleading-videos-claiming-show/story?id=74148233&fbclid=IwAR27lopUFT2RVS91tB5q-XwvxDNxu0bxcQXkXG784dG4RKf0H1HbR5Cnu-s
Example #1 of how effective Trump's propaganda machine is: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/526204-south-dakota-nurse-says-many-dying-patients-still-insist-covid-19-not?fbclid=IwAR2pe8JLapCvGdUnXgyo-fAfUC6ylfXAqrJ-R9WITgCCSdRC3_114KWthgQ
Example #2: Crossing Trump's propaganda machine gets you fired. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/17/936003057/cisa-director-chris-krebs-fired-after-trying-to-correct-voter-fraud-disinformati
Example # 3: Trump's crowd-size lies did not end with his inauguration crowd. How about these Trumpsters tricks: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/nov/17/facebook-posts/photos-show-cleveland-cavaliers-parade-and-womens-/?fbclid=IwAR0YCtmfQ3oZzQDMC6utWHibXXsncwyrDan3HfGoXUaHzFBKZR-RKH4cV1g
Pre November 3.:
Foxated on Hunter Biden? Funny how that story came about and where it went. Here is an example how Fox media
made it into a big nothing.How the Hunter Biden Laptop Story Disappeared from Fox News Prime Time After the Election (msn.com)
Back in the communist era in the USSR and also in Nazi Germany, there was a political commissar in charge of making sure thoughts, words, and deeds conformed to the political leader or party line, throughout their society. Now, in the Trump administration, it appears there are informal commissars who make scientific reports curtailed, rewritten, or buried, particularly when it comes to mortality figures of COVID regardless of scientific findings or the effectiveness of masks and the timing of the availability of immunizations. We may not yet have a dictatorship, but our wannabe autocrat, Donald Trump, is showing the same tendencies to act as others before him did. (for more on how members of our family experienced this first hand see another posting of the blog: https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2020/09/trumps-political-commissars-are-at-work.html What Trump is doing is even more insidious than either Stalin or Tito because both of these mid-20th-century communists appeared to believe in their own ideology, but Trump believed one thing and told his followers to believe something else.
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How many times have you heard from his mouth not " to believe what you hear or see" and. believe him instead?
We should have gotten a clue when he exaggerated the size of his inauguration audience, even when photo comparisons with Obama's audience his inauguration were shown side by side. There is another world out there that takes data from scientific sources, evidence, and experience as reality and believe what they see, hear, experience and rationally consider.
How and why does he do it?. It is not always a matter of ignorance, or forgotten school lessons, ADHD, or lack of reading comprehension many presumed. It is not that he is ignorant of science. He knows how the disease spreads. He is a germaphobe and, he fears human physical contact by a handshake or a sympathetic hug with the public, as he called" disgusting" supporters attending his rallies, per a former Pence aid. It may be he is driven by instinct instead of calculation, but it is effective in shaping the public perception that favors him, the person.
If anything speaks to his being driven by calculation, it was revealed by Bob Woodward's book RAGE,. It was Trump's intentional manipulation to shape and bond with his core followers with the self-knowledge of the deadly danger of COVID, caught on Woodward's tape, while simultaneously telling his followers it was just like the usual flu and not to worry.
.It takes two to validate one another and he has an uncanny ability to know what rings the chimes of at least 40% of voters. This is not to say his voters do not know their own minds. . They do. He just amplifies the depth of their anger, fears, racial prejudices, a desire for a "strong leader" to save them, and/or economic self-interest as he plays to it and intensifies it The roar of a maskless indoor rally crowd in Henderson, NV, or Tulsa, or TV ratings and media coverage of his tweets validate what he utters is working to cultivate loyal followers. as well an understanding that resonates with them. They think if they act like COVID is over, it is over, so why wear a mask, while experts warn we have not turned the corner, as Trump trumpets. It has just plateaued until winter drives activities indoors and the usual flu season begins.
When every news outlet, domestic and foreign, write and report something else than what FOX and Trump media report, the reality is not just a matter of perception, gut feel, or hunch. He is an intentional manipulator. of other people's thoughts, even when he knows the evidence indicates the contrary. which he acknowledges as the truth in private.
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More....
As a first-hand witness to Russian consolidation of control of East Germany and spending in-person time in a country run by a dictator and over 50 years being married to a refugee from communist Yugoslavia,I noted the first strategy used by these dictators to get and keep power is to block, and jam all news from the West and the only news allowed was their version. It was a method of mind control. that was also physica.l..No western publications or radio reports are allowed. In these days the menu and access to a smorgasbord of news providers online, the way unfavorable news is blocked by the Trumpsters is with four years of claiming any source others that their approved ones were called "fake news. " . . Trump himself has conditioned his followers to block out inconvenient facts and news, not physically, but in their minds. He has dismissed any news except that coming by Fox and Trump's approved news sources as "fake". It began with "alternative facts" at the early years of the Trump administration to his continued damning every other source except his approved ones...and his willing followers and worshippers of Trump himself are more than willing to comply. There is one particular stock answer that I see pop up on some Facebook sites, terming any news from any source, domestic and foreign, that provides facts and data that expose Trump's spin as "fake news", presenting no proof, data, or information to the contrary....just the two-word comment: "fake news". I appreciate those who do provide "alternative facts' and sources, but I also find the same Trump supporters are still calling inconvenient news stories dismissed as "fake" as well, even when presented with data, evidence, and facts,.
The service that Bob Woodward provided in his book "RAGE", and corresponding tapes of Trump's own voice is to expose his intentional distortion of "facts to the contrary", to be just the opposite to the public of what he admitted to Woodward on tape privately. Top of that list is Trump's wilful lies that COVID is no big thing, just like the flu...at exactly the same time he acknowledged the deadly and infectious nature of COVID...In the past couple of days he now sets out to denigrate facemasks again and launch a policy of "herd mentality", which would require the death totals in the US to be at least 2 million (10 times the current deaths), and 60% of US population to survive the infection. He is leading by example and calling out Biden from wearing facemasks since Biden does lead by example himself. Trump is holding indoor maskless rallies and telling red state governors with spikes in COVID to do away with mandatory mask-wearing. .The result is not just a political tactic, it is also a matter of life and death. .for his own supporters ...and .as an 82-year-old, for my likely premature death from mask shunners. My answer is another nine or ten months of lockdown until vaccines will be available to the general public, per the CDC 9/17.
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