Slight of Hand: Trump Governing By Optical Delusion

[tgards79]

BTRTN on Trump's first week:
http://www.borntorunthenumbers.com/2017/01/slight-of-hand-trump-governing-by.html

[Mister Ed]

1. K & R. An important read.

It always helps to provide an excerpt in addition to the URL:

Donald Trump’s Satan-In-Chief, Steve Bannon, not only formally declared but begged to be quoted in an interview in which he said that the media was actually the “Opposition Party.” Bannon’s role, it appears, is to devise a strategy to ensure that the credibility of the media is thoroughly crushed in the cerebrums of the Imperial Storm troopers who represent Trump’s core supporters. Steve Bannon is in the business of manufacturing Teflon for his boss: he is setting out to create a world in which any press report that is critical of Donald Trump can be immediately dismissed precisely because it is the product of a biased, untruthful, deceptive, and manipulative news establishment that has only the goal of undermining the Trump presidency. This is the Nadia Comaneci of twisted logic: the very fact that a news report is negative about Donald Trump is presented as the proof that the news service is biased against him.

...Bannon’s clarion call is the philosophy going forward: anything or anyone who attacks Donald Trump is a product of the biased liberal news media that is out to get Donald Trump. Crush the media and you have crushed the true opposition.

http://www.borntorunthenumbers.com/2017/01/slight-of-hand-trump-governing-by.html


In this culture war, facts are the casualties, and the reports from the battlefield are alarming.

...Donald Trump’s rain of error is already well underway, but do not be misled: it is not based exclusively on stupidity, ignorance, or insecurity, as many have hypothesized. It is a playbook. It is a willful and intentional plan to make every single possible daily occurrence an opportunity to create confrontation between the Trump White House and the news media. Bannon’s bet is that every such confrontation will further solidify the core identification that Trump has created with his base: a pervasive sense of victimhood that Trump’s supporters feel in the face of powerful entrenched establishment forces in Washington, Wall Street, and the news media.

[reggieandlee]

2. Comprehensive and integrated view of Trump's first week.

This is worth reading. It examines Trump's first week in office in an interesting and integrated way, and makes the point that when looked at through the proper lens, everything Trump is doing -- no matter how scattershot or random -- fits into a coherent and consistent narrative. And, in some ways, an even scarier one than you might have thought. Good stuff.