Five reasons why Trump's followers love his lies

I think HST didn’t really believe in distancing opinion from journalism. So maybe by the standards of the profession he was a bad journalist. But he did care about facts. He didn’t have to make up stuff about Richard Nixon, for example, because the bare truth about Nixon was bad enough, and Nixon even incriminated himself through the tapes. He did say (in effect) Nixon was a sleazy bastard, but really, was that not justified?

I recently came across this guy’s videos, but he’s been doing this series for a year, and they break down the tactics of the alt-right and gives advice on how to counter them. Worth a watch.

The Alt-Right Playbook:

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There’s a kind thought. I like to think I can help in the conversation they will eventually lose very hard to some pineapple daywreck, a fern, and a lit Cortana (Diaspora Dot? Watson for Maybe Learn to Live Again?) but the fern probably has it covered better. >>FOLLOW THE FERN<< Less investigation is needed! That thread unroll looked -really- good Mark F., I’mma start looking for oxytocin tags if --thread-- looks that good again. Weird '10s browsers. Man.

Jim Acosta’s delivery was off (by the end.) Time to go offer those offended some horrid service they feel obligated to while putting out class acts IRL with whatever blessings are necessary. Look, here’s a Whole Foods with no veg. or bulk and apparently all 360-brand canned orangutan from CAR. Only with fresh veg. and bulk and it’s not meat (or corpses, or you know, shipped frozen over the South Atlantic.)

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Hmm. Sounds ok, actually.

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Why would you insult the steno pool like that?

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Also, this wasn’t the news story. This was a press conference. The raw material from which news stories are written. Even in @Dustin_Dopps school of journalism, I can’t imagines the interview with a source is merely a chance for the the interviewee to make unchallanged statements.

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Creatures that look like people follow Trump because doing so lets them exercise their own cruelty and hate and selfishness and bigotry. Through him they can vicariously be the pigs they want to be but can’t openly be in public.

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I have higher expectations of journalists than simply “be a pukefunnel”.
Also, higher aspirations for myself as a news consumer than simply “third position in a Human Centipede”.

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I recall way back in 2016 when a conservative relative said Hillary still being married to Bill after his affair proved she wasn’t fit to be President.

I said something along the lines of, “So Hillary should be judged for her reaction to things her husband did, but Trump shouldn’t be judged for actually doing those same things?”

I don’t think I’m ever likely to get a response to that.

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A reporter would say “President Trump called the so-called caravan an invasion.”

Mindlessly repeating falsehoods is the exact opposite of what a good reporter does. Is that really what you were taught in journalism school. Just repeat the falsehood? Don’t point out that it’s factually false? That’s not only worthless journalism. Repeating falsehoods is actively harmful. Journalists should do better. https://www.vox.com/2018/10/31/18048424/journalists-stop-repeating-trump-lies

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Goblin Bard?

Look at Trump’s spell set:

Fear, Suggestion, Misdirection, Emotions, Confusion, Hypnotism, Deafness, Blur, Ventriloquism, Wall of Fog, Changes Self, Magic Mouth, Hypnotic Pattern, Blindness, Phantasmal Forces, Fog, Paralyzation, Illusory Script, Shadow Monsters

Isn’t it obvious that he is a Illusionist? And a trolley illusionist, at that.

image

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It also makes the story about the altercation, not about the White House trying to silence an accredited reporter asking legitimate questions. It is extraordinary for a representative of the White House to be trying to grab the microphone from a reporter while asking a legitimate question, and that has been totally obscured by the flap about who did what during the grabbing, which implicitly legitimises the grabbing of the microphone, everyone seems to accept that is a thing and that the problem is how it happened.

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This badly embedded tweeterbot fruit rollup thing essay is well said.

I have been convinced for a while, and certainly since 2016, that persuading “conservative” voters is a dead end. The only thing worth trying to persuade them of is that they are poison to politics and should avoid it.

It’s very much like if someone you know is a gang member. You might try to persuade them to stop (even knowing that nothing you say will make a difference), but in the end you accept that what will and should happen is that they go to jail.

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I think there are a lot of reasons people support trump and at the heart of them is that they are either racist and sexist themselves or they just don’t care about racism and sexism all that much.

Then there are the full on Trumppets who are full on circular logic: Trump is a good person. He is going to make America great again. Because he is good he didn’t do those bad things people say he did. Ok, even if he did them that doesn’t mean he isn’t good because he is good and if he did them he had a good reason. Ok, so he did them but that doesn’t make him bad because he is good. At least he isn’t Hillary. She’s bad because Trump said she was bad. And Trump is good and I believe what he says. …So what if Trump has actually done most of the things he accuses Hillary of doing? He is good and so it is ok that he did it because he is good and if he did it then it can’t be bad. If Hillary did those exact same things they would be bad because she is bad and does bad things. And those are all liberal sources! If he did those things show me a conservative source talking about it! And that’s just your opinion…

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Trump diehards aren’t complaining about what Acosta said. I think he was grandstanding and even without this controversy he wouldn’t have accomplished anything except make himself the center of attention.

However, what people are complaining about is the video where the female staffer tried to grab the mic from him. Sarah Huckabee Sanders shared a video on twitter that was doctored to make it look like Acosta purposely and forcefully chopped at the arm of the female staffer. Since then I’ve seen more analysis of those frames of video than the Zapruder film.

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After reading that I had to go sit down for a bit. My old head just doesn’t spin that fast anymore.

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Let me see if I understand you correctly.
If you were covering a White House news conference, and President Trump said, “Dustin-Dopps is a fool,” your duty as a professional reporter with a journalism degree would be to write, “At a news conference today, President Trump announced that Dustin-Dopps is a fool.”
For you to question or dispute Trump’s statement in any way would be injecting your opinion into a story, which is a violation of the journalistic code.
Does that about cover it?

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Same. I don’t/won’t interact with these people anymore. It’s not worth it. They’re just old HS classmates who friended me on FB. Then I later discovered they are clearly idiots.

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I suggest you read or re-read “1984”. By your journalistic “principle”, if Trump or his propagandists were to say “2+2=5” you would be bound to simply repeat what is demonstrably false. That’s not journalism.

Journalism does not mean a reporter must simply repeat an obvious falsehood. On the contrary; in such a case their job is to ask wise follow-ups designed to clarify whether the basis on which the statement rests may legitimately be open to interpretation, or is more clearly BS.

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