Trump's conspiracy theory catchphrase: "There's something going on"

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“There’s something going on”

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This reminds me, weirdly, of the “lot mentality” that can happen in auctions. The idea that there is hidden treasures to be found if only one would look closely enough.
At some level, it seems a matter of Apophenia and our need to see patterns (even when there are none to be seen). A human desire fulfilled, as it were. No different than how casinos work- something the short-fingered vulgarian is surely familiar with.

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Frida - I Know There’s Something Going On

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There is something going on, but that’s neither here nor there, and at the end of the day, it is what it is.

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Well remember, this is coming from the #1 birther. Is anything surprising at this point?

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You’ve got red on you.

(Never before has the irony of pointing out an irrelevant detail in the middle of a crisis seemed to me to have such real-world significance…but y’all know that. Why am I even still typing?)

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^She’s got it going on.

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Not really, just the evolution of dogwhistles while the old ones are drained dry.

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But he’s right! There is something going on. It’s empirically true.

You liberals are trying to twist his words when really he is just invoking a clearer version of Descartes’ cogito argument.

Trump for president of ominous tautologies, 2016!

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It’s just like EVERYTHING is SOMEWHERE.

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Opportunity missed. A day or so ago something on the BBS made me reply-and-delete something along these lines:

So there’s this thing with the Russians spying on the Democrats, and Putin wants Trump as President, they get on together very well, and all I’m saying is that there’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on. That’s all I’m saying.

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It doesn’t help that the government, obviously, does try to keep sinister truths from people. Did you ever feel like the government was tracking your every movement? Well, at least for a while there, they actually were. Have there been instances of collusions with foreign governments and agents to commit what are essentially crimes (activities beyond legal authority)? Yes, sure, many times.

So it becomes a serious problem that actual history provides fertile soil for paranoia. Excessive government secrecy just allows the imagination to fill the gap.

But is Trump an asshole? That’s not a secret.

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This would appear to be the new “I’m just asking questions.”

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It’s Michelle Malkin all over again. Remember when it was the “some people say…” bs. She was banned from MSNBC for that crap by Chris Matthews, when he finally had enough of the idiot insinuations from “some people say…” but when asked to name some people, all she could do was go: “Well, some people say…”

GOP dog whistle for decades now. And then they feign being the victim when you call them on this…

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And I think that’s part of why this is a catchphrase we haven’t seen highlighted before. The US government has done things that ought to be beyond belief, and beyond my facetious something-is-going-on-in-an-ontological-sense comment above, there almost certain is some shadowy thing the US government (that is, it’s agencies) is doing that will be widely condemned when declassified decades from now.

But Obama involved in the Orlando shootings? Trump crossed the line from plausible paranoia to batshit crazy.

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I was once like you are now
And I know that it’s not easy
To be calm when you’ve found
Something going on
But take your time, think a lot
Think of everything you’ve got
For you will still be here tomorrow
But your dreams may not.

-Famous Muslim Yusuf Islam gives utterly futile advice to Donald Trump.

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Except this isn’t even about the government - it’s personal - it’s “(as a black man,) the President of the United States is secretly a Kenyan Muslim terrorist out to destroy the United States, somehow working in collusion with those who have murdered Americans.” It’s the post-9/11 accusation thrown around by Republicans that anyone who disagreed with them was some sort of terrorist sympathizer meets some Cold War McCarthy-style “Communist sleeper-agent” insanity, multiplied by a thousand.

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