1/ The. Endless. Fucking. Pretense. Here's Sebastian Gorka from Monday, saying something patently inane on Hannity, chief mouthpiece of Fox News, the unofficial State TV apparatus of the Trump infection. https://www.mediaite.com/tv/seb-gorka-nunes-memo-is-100-times-bigger-than-what-caused-the-american-revolution/ …
2/ It's easy to get outraged by things like this because he's either transparently lying or plainly weak-minded. From there, it's one hop to thinking "no one believes this" or "anyone who believes this is stupid." But, belief plays no part in why this works and why it's bad.
-
-
3/ Hannity, Gorka, Fox, Breitbart, Bannon, Trump, and the whole complicit
@GOP aren't lying like this while hoping people believe them. They aren't trying to change anyone's minds. They're doing something simpler and far worse. They're manufacturing pretense.Show this thread -
4/ People parroting this bullshit don't actually care if it's true. It's not what motivates their support for Trump. Instead, they just want some talking points to echo as cover obscuring their real reasons -- the ones they know they can't otherwise admit.
Show this thread -
5/ The talking points don't have to be probably true. Odds have nothing to do with it. They merely need something just to the right of impossible so that polite people grant them the possibility. They just want the pretense.
Show this thread -
6/ The problem now: the pretense failed. The compounding of unlikely has rendered their feigned protestations preposterous, revealing them for who they are - fucking deplorable. But, they've publicly committed to their positions. Trumps identity and their's have blurred together.
Show this thread -
7/ That's why the size of the lie doesn't matter. It hastens a conclusion, for better or worse, but it doesn't change the expected outcome because it was never driving support. It wasn't about expressed beliefs.
Show this thread -
8/ And, it's why people saying "why won't you debate me?" are insincere. They don't want a debate. They don't care about true or not. They know their full of shit. They just want you to implicitly concede to their wildly improbable possibilities, renewing the pretense.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.