Monday, August 24, 2020

Trump is Off and Running

The GOP convention is on and Trump will take center stage and speak on all four days. The party doesn't have a platform. It has dropped all pretense of being anything other than a cheer leading squad for Donald Trump.

This is extraordinarily dangerous to say the least. 

What's worse is that Trump has an excellent grasp on what he needs to do. He will blame everyone else for everything that's wrong; he will take credit for anything that's right, regardless of whether he had anything to do with it being right; he will belittle those running against him and he will appeal to the basest nature of the electorate.

He will pound away at these themes repeatedly and over time grow his lies to epic proportions. Why? Because he understands the key strategy of all demagogues.

...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility...For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

It worked in 2016 and we need to figure out a way to insure it doesn’t work in 2020. One way to do that is to tell people what he’s going to do before he does it. If you explain a trick before the magician performs it the trick looses a lot. As noted above, after is often too late.

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