What's been happening is confirmation bias...

[TreasonousBastard]

and it didn't start with Trump. I'm sure Aristotle recognized it, but he didn't have a way to map brain waves.

It's an unfortunate part of the human condition-- we gravitate toward evidence of things we would like to believe. Trump and Republican propagandists didn't invent it, but they are masters at using it.

Trump avoids reporters and tweets his unabridged nonsense to15-20 million people who lap it up simply because it sounds good to them. Railing on about the constant lies ends up being meaningless. Attempting to argue "truth" with them simply hardens their belief structure. Sound like religion? It's the same mechanism.

One suggestion made was to never picture him. It's a lot of fun drawing parody sketches, but they actually help harden the believers. No pictures at all would work better.

Another is to simply report the news, not his tweets. Assume everything he says is a lie, so simply report the truth. Trump arranged for only one lousy third of the Carrier jobs to be saved, not by threatening to fine them, but by giving them 7 million of taxpayer money. And it wasn't Trump anyway-- Pence did it because he's still Governor for a while and even if the good citizens realize they've been had, there's not much they can do to him after January.

Trump is a master at getting good publicity no matter what he does. Six bankruptcies and he still says with a straight face that he's a great businessman. You can't beat him at that game, you have to go around him.

WaPo, the Times, and a few others are doing just that.


The other part of the story is the thousands of other jobs in the area moving to Mexico. Carrier is not the only employer.

[Fast Walker 52]

1. here's an analogy

Republican voters = toddlers

GOP propaganda and lies = sugar

Trump = the candy man

the outcome = hyperactive cranky toddlers on a sugar high who don't really know what they are doing

[Nevernose]

2. So how do we overcome those things?

That's directed to you as in "sane people" and not specifically you.

We can't control what the media reports (though we can and should turn off cable news). We can't control whether people draw caricatures of Orange Buffoon or report on his tweets.

We're in this Idiocracatic, social media driven, reality TV fueled shame spiral, and I have no idea how to drag us out of it.

What I've got so far is that, this winter, I'm going to read about local organizing. Then I'm going to organize opposition. Then we're going to raise hell and vote and GOTV. I just don't know if, given the current climate of stupidity, it will ever be enough. I mean: we elected Donald Trump as our president. How stupid a nation could we possibly be?

[politicaljunkie41910]

3. The media could just start referring to him in all their writings as "Leo the Liar" since he wants

to be King rather than President, or "Don the Con" for the liar that he is, or as the CAC as in "Con Artist in Charge". Take your pick.

It is so disrespectful to all of us as Americans to have for the first time a POTUS who lies about just about everything. And for the media to pretend that they don't know that there is a lie somewhere in every utterance he makes is so disrespectful to us as citizens that I can't imagine anyone not getting a paycheck from him having any respect for him. I'm glad I'm not on active duty in the military anymore because I couIdn't salute that liar. I guess now the Marine Corp Band instead of playing "Hail to the Chief" could always change it to "The Hell with the Chief". And for his Surrogate Scottie Hughes to declare that Facts are Dead just because his campaign is made up of Truth Deniars and the media chooses to look the other way and yawns as if this type of behavior is just business as usual is an affront to all. Trump makes Nixon look like a choir boy.

http://crooksandliars.com/2016/12/trump-booster-scottie-nell-hughes-declares

[ginnyinWI]

4. Whenever someone talks about something DT has said,

I say, "don't believe anything he says because he is a liar." Only look at what he does. And I think the media should do the same: report on things he and his administration have done, and analyze it, and simply ignore all of his statements, boasts, brags, especially if they are tweets!

I love the "no pictures" idea too! Make him as much of a non-entitiy as possible.

[JudyM]

5. Can't rec. this highly enough. Should be an op-ed. Consider that! MSM needs to act responsibly

As they should've been throughout the campaign. Now look what they wrought.

[kentuck]

6. A regular old PT Barnum...

Do you like to gamble!

He yells, "Step right this way!"

Can you guess which shell the bean is under?

Slight of hand and loud exaggerations.

Put up the Carnival tent. The Greatest Show On Earth Has Arrived!

And the carnival barker is one and the same.