BEEN DAZED AND CONFUSED FOR SO LONG IT'S NOT TRUE
Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary, went on a five minute rant in a press conference Saturday about crowd size at Trump’s inauguration, telling several obvious lies in the process. A day later, there are a few competing theories about why the Trump Administration decided to let that press conference happen. All the theories are believable to some extent.
The most straightforward theory is that Trump felt angry and insecure and sent one of his lackeys out to lecture the press. Given Trump’s fondness for dominating his hired help, another purpose of the event may have been to test Spicer’s willingness to abandon every shred of his dignity in the service of the Donald. There are also rumors that Spicer was set up as part of a turf war between Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus. In Trumplandia, any or all of those things could be true.
But my favorite theory comes from an anonymous poster at DC Urban Moms and Dads (link below). Read the whole thing, but the main point is that Trump’s spokespeople don’t mind being obvious liars. Their press conferences are part of a strategy of disinformation, where the main goal is to confuse rather than inform. Their secondary goal is to demonstrate their contempt for the press – that dominance thing again – and dare them to do anything about it.
Two 20th century authorities on totalitarianism anticipated the Trump strategy. Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, “In an ever-changing and incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true…. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie, and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” George Orwell, in 1984, said it more succinctly: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Team Trump’s operating assumption is that about a third of the nation is already in the Orwell/Arendt zone. They also assume that another third – the woke voters – are wise to their game. The goal of their disinformation campaign is to overwhelm everyone else with confusion, so that sooner or later they’ll get tired of hearing arguments about real news vs. fake news and simply opt out of the political process altogether. They’re sowing apathy and disgust as a form of vote suppression.
Their plan could work. What the Woke-American community can do to stop it is to stay vigilant. Our job is to notice when we see friends (or ourselves) starting to check out, and reminding them (or ourselves) not to let Trump win. We’re getting some help from the press, both print and TV, as (for instance) Chuck Todd called out Kellyanne Conway on Meet the Press today, and the New York Times’ Sunday headline “Trump Falsely Hits Media on Turnout and Intelligence Rift.” Would that they had been so bold in August, but better late than never. Stay awake!