Obamagate is about a racist man that somewhere somehow MAYBE understands that he will never be one tenth of the man Obama is. I really hope that somewhere in Trumps reptilian ‘brain’ he realizes this. Good fucking luck trying to punch up Donald.
The GOP wants to distract from his incompetence and failures. Playing to his idiot racist supporters is just the thing to do. They are still complaining about Clinton emails, and need some other CT to allow them to sleep at night. Straight out of the Republican playbook.
It shows about as much imagination as the First Lady calling her campaign “Be Best,” to piggyback on Michelle Obama’s “Be Better.” Adding the suffix “-gate” is silly since the Watergate was the name of the hotel where all the spying went on. It has no meaning in and of itself.
In today’s America the fact that something has no meaning in and of itself is a reason/explanation/comment that has no meaning in and of itself. See how that works? You’re welcome.
I’ve been keeping a copy of this text around for the past couple of years because it needs to be deployed frequently. Sartre wrote this about anti-Semites but it applies perfectly to fascists in general and our American fascists in particular.
Earlier in the conversation here someone wished that a reporter would stand up at a press conference and say, “This is bullshit.” A few days ago we finally saw how that would work out: Trump simply declared the press conference over and walked out. He definitely loftily indicated that the time for argument is past.
In short, “Obamagate” is transparently bullshit and is intended exactly that way. That it’s irrational is the point.
That quotation certainly hits the nail right on the head. Especially this: “…it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.”
This is why Biden and the Dems can’t use trump’s methods to defeat him. They have to render trump impotent. They have to move the contest off the board, off the playing field, outside the game. I don’t know how – my imagination is limited because I still believe in words.
It is painfully simple: do not speak of him. Do not respond to him. Do not mention his name. If asked about him, talk about your ideas on the particular subject, gibing away from him. Treat him as though he does not matter, that it is not all about HIM, that we are headed away from this ugly place. What? No, I do not care one iota if that guy fucks pigs, let him have his fun. Just make sure my glazed ham is thoroughly cooked.
But let’s not forget: it’s not just gun-toting MAGAbots who are susceptible to schemes against truth and fact-based reality (and incidentally, this is where democracy can really fall apart):
To see how this works, check out those Tara Reade threads.
Here’s Garry Kasparov’s insightful comments on propaganda and truth:
The earlier post referencing antisemitism was spot on.
I agree that anyone who “believes” in Obamagate knows that there’s likely been no actual legal crime committed. That’s why I said earlier that they probably know that Trump just pulled the allegation straight out of his ass and that there’s no actual evidence of a crime being committed.
But at the same time, it’s a big mistake to dismiss the seriousness of their thinking. They’re not joking around. They might be having some fun with words but they are deadly serious about demonizing those with whom they have grievances. Due to a variety of technological, social, economic, and political changes that have hit us with great force and at dizzying speed, fissures have developed and we have become a fractured society. Mistrust grows and some of those wounds are becoming gangrenous.
One consequence is that there is deep mistrust of people who don’t appear to be like us or are recognizably different in some apparently meaningful way. In this situation, people become hyper-defensive. And they assume that they are under attack. They assume that whatever they can imagine doing to someone they consider to be a nemesis, they can just as easily imagine being done to them by that person, which only serves to intensify the bunker mentality. It’s literally people adopting a battlefield mentality, except that we’re not on live battlefields – not yet anyway.
Just keep speaking truth. Over and over and over again.
There is no better truth to exploit than what’s happening right now, right in front of everyone.
I am bullish on Trump’s ability to take a debacle and turn it into a full-scale meltdown for the ages. He will do that. He will try to lie about it, and he could possibly get away with it. But he’s less likely to if people keep fearlessly holding his nose to the giant pile of shit that he (they) have dropped on our carpet. Keep rubbing their fucking noses in it.
Yes, I wish they would do this. Trump is a headline whore and unfortunately all he has to do is fart and it makes headlines. Even the MSM are guilty of this. He prefers that the headlines praise him, but he doesn’t care if they vilify him. As long as he gets them. And if a few [del]hours[/del] minutes go by when he’s not in the headlines, he’ll tweet something outrageous and make everyone jump. He’s fiddling and we’ve all been dancing to his tune waaaaay too long!
I understand your point, but remember that John Kerry believed that answering the false Swift Boat claims (made up out of whole cloth by Jerome Corsi) was beneath his dignity, so he didn’t. And we saw how that went.
I don’t know if Corsi made up the bullshit Swift Boat claims, but he certainly wrote the book that publicized them.
The claims, and television ads, were out there before Corsi’s book.
It’s also worth noting that retired admiral William Schaacte, an SBVT member and bullshit artist about Kerry’s service in Vietnam, was a partner in a lobbying firm. His clients received tens of millions of dollars in defense contracts from the Bush adminstration after the election. Just a bit of payment for services rendered, I guess.
Also, one of his partners in the firm, David Norcross, was convention chair for the Republican convention that year.
I remember Corsi bragging about it, but I don’t have a cite to hand. He certainly fanned the flames if he wasn’t the outright liar about it. Disgusting.
When his name cropped up in connection with Trump, I wasn’t surprised.
And we did not see the universe where John Kerry got pulled down a rabbit hole by answering the false Swift Boat claims, and are now sitting here talking about how he lost by being dragged through the mud and morass of trying to defend himself against bad faith claims.
