What You're Seeing and What You're Reading Isn't Happening
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Information technology has long been apparent we elected a Fox News Grandfather to be President of the United states of america, but Donald Trump'south descent into the infotainment vortex seems to be gaining steam. Where he once hate-watched whatever number of networks for the sheer joy of seeing his proper name in lights, the president has at present taken to cocooning himself in the friendly confines of Fox News at all times.
Equally The New York Times reports, this led to a grit-up with his own wife, First Lady Melania Trump, when she dared watch CNN on Air Force I:
On the first couple'due south contempo trip overseas, Melania Trump's idiot box aboard Air Force One was tuned to CNN. President Trump was not pleased.
He raged at his staff for violating a rule that the White Firm entourage should brainstorm each trip tuned to Trick—his preferred network over what he considers the "fake news" CNN—and acquired "a bit of a stir" aboard Air Force One, according to an e-mail obtained by The New York Times. The e-mail, an internal exchange between officials in the White Firm Military Office and the White Firm Communications Bureau last Thursday, also chosen for the ordering of 2 additional televisions to support Axle, a TiVo-like streaming device, to brand sure the president and first lady could both watch Television in their divide hotel rooms when they travel.
Needless to say, this is not a peculiarly healthy information diet for the world'due south nigh powerful man. Information technology has long been in dispute how much of Trump's worldview is at present shaped past the high-level briefings he gets from aides and career public servants, and how much he gets from Fox & Friends. By his tweets, information technology looks like the denizens of the Burrow of Corking American Discourse are winning. Accounts of trying to cursory the U.S. president are harrowing, and it has never been in doubt whether the president is an avid reader.
But as the Times story makes clear, this growing psychosis is now manifest in Executive Co-operative policy:
At the finish of the electronic mail concatenation, officials confirmed that tuning the TVs to Play a trick on would be standard operating procedure going forward.
No one in the president's orbit shall be exposed to dissenting information! Only the pravda network is acceptable viewing. It is extremely reassuring to know that the president and his aides are working in a world where Steve Doocy is a major source of disquisitional data, foreign and domestic.
But the more than pressing result is that this preference for unreality is as well manifesting more directly than ever in Trump's public persona. Yeah, he is well established as i of history'due south near prolific liars, a Truthful Believer in the thought that in that location is no objective reality, and anything is truthful if enough people believe information technology. His aides—Sarah Huckabee Sanders, presiding—accept bought in fully, something for which a BBC anchor thankfully chosen out Sean Spicer, Sanders' predecessor, this week.
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But there's a new level of brashness to Trump in recent days—a frightening proposition. The term "gaslighting" has been thrown effectually a lot when information technology comes to his public lies, merely a couple of his pronouncements truly rose to that level this calendar week. First, in that location was his speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which he managed, through his Reverse Midas Touch, to pervert into a tawdry, crass political display in the way of his rallies:
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"What you're seeing and what you're reading is non what's happening."
This is almost a piddling too on-the-nose Orwellian. In 1984, George Orwell described the totalitarian regime'south ultimate demand of its subjects:
The political party told yous to reject the show of your optics and ears. It was their final, well-nigh essential command.
It has long been clear that the president is attempting to build a genuine authoritarian move over which only his word has any ability, and which he tin use to ride roughshod over the institutions of commonwealth. So far, this effort has been an unmitigated success, as his supporters inhabit the same infotainment vortex he does and other members of the Republican Party—which controls both Houses of Congress and has a ramble duty to provide a bank check on the Executive Branch—bow to him out of craven fealty.
Lies that are not only lies, but instead serve to destroy the very concept of truth, are a cornerstone of any authoritarian playbook. As the announcer Masha Gessen wrote while comparing Trump and Vladimir Putin'southward styles of lying in The New York Review of Books:
Lying is the message. It'south not just that both Putin and Trump lie, information technology is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to affirm power over truth itself. Accept, for case, Putin's statements on Ukraine. In March 2014 he claimed that at that place were no Russian troops in newly annexed Crimea; a month later he affirmed that Russians troops had been on the ground. Throughout 2014 and 2015, he repeatedly denied that Russian troops were fighting in eastern Ukraine; in 2016 he easily acknowledged that they were there. In each case, Putin insisted on lying in the face up of articulate and convincing bear witness to the contrary, and in each instance his subsequent shift to truthful statements were not admissions given nether duress: they were proud, even boastful affirmatives made at his convenience. Together, they communicated a unmarried message: Putin's power lies in beingness able to say what he wants, when he wants, regardless of the facts. He is president of his country and king of reality.
Trump has exhibited like behavior, plainly for the aforementioned reason: when he claims that he didn't make statements that he is on record as making, or when he claims that millions of people voting illegally cost him the pop vote, he is not making easily disprovable factual claims: he is claiming command over reality itself.
This was in bear witness elsewhere this week, as Trump produced this remarkable tweet Tuesday:
Why would he call back the Russians intend to influence the 2018 elections? Could it be because they interfered in the 2016 elections to help him win?
Only Trump has repeatedly denied they interfered, until he granted that they did, and then said they didn't over again. And all the while, he claims to exist the Toughest President Always on Russian federation, fifty-fifty though he repeatedly sided with Putin, the authoritarian thug who attacked America, against his ain countrymen and United States allies, while standing adjacent to him during the disgraceful press conference in Helsinki. He has also raged over, and dragged his feet on implementing, sanctions against Russia. He has made noises indicating the U.S. could recognize Russia's annexing of Crimea from Ukraine. It is simply unreality to advise Russia is not thrilled with their investment in 2016.
But none of that is actually the bespeak. As Gessen explained beautifully, the bespeak is to command ability over reality itself. All this tin be true at diverse times, or at the aforementioned time, if Trump says it is. Which is to say, we can't be sure that anything is true at all. In that environment, the only matter that matters is what powerful people say. Trump'south war on the truth is an admittedly fascinating amalgam of vanity and crippling confirmation bias combined with a ferocious instinct for manipulation and charade. He is plummeting through the infotainment vortex, merely he isn't gasping for air or grabbing at something to hang onto. He seems to thrive in the void.
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Source: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22547037/donald-trump-orwellian-truth-reality-eyes-ears/
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