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As Ruth Ben-Ghiat says, the wall-to-wall lying we're seeing Trump engage in right now as the election nears is par for the course for authoritarians, who have to control reality for their followers. She says that "Trump’s campaign … is better understood as a disinformation and radicalization machine."
#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation
/1
https://lucid.substack.com/p/the-authoritarians-fortress-of-lies
A.B. Stoddard concludes that the Republicans’ closing campaign message to all of us is, "We lie to you."
"Fear wasn’t enough, so they are campaigning on falsehoods."
#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation
/2
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/republican-closing-message-2024-we-lie-to-you
"The overarching goal of Trump’s disinformation efforts is to persuade voters that they should live in fear—and that only he can save them."
~ David Corn
#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation
/3
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/10/donald-trump-is-running-a-disinformation-campaign/
"The press still does not know how to handle the avalanche of lies that is MAGA’s chief contribution to our national life. ...
Not all lies are created equal. MAGA’s lies are designed to instill suspicion, to corrode tolerance, and to shred our unity as a nation."
~ Mona Charen
#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/4
"The job of the press is not to give the same treatment to both sides—it is to present the truth, or as close an approximation of it as can be ascertained. When one side stretches the truth and the other side seeks to obliterate it, they should not be treated equally."
#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/5
"The media is applying a vicious double standard here — letting Trump get away scot-free with his salads of meaningless blather while holding Harris to an unrealistic standard of cogency and candor."
~ Robert Reich
#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/6
"The media centering itself as the main story in a presidential campaign where the fate of democracy is in the balance is self-parodic, and self-indicting. It illustrates, and sums up, all the ways in which the press has failed in the Trump era."
~ Noah Berlatsky
#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/7
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/kamala-harris-mainstream-media-interviews
"They are cranky because 'their relevance relies on being the sole arbiters of asking the questions.' But in the current media ecosystem, people have lots of options that are not the NYT and Politico. And that makes the NYT and Politico sad. ...
Harris doesn’t have any obligation to help the mainstream media hand the election to Trump again.
#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/8
And as Trump's niece Mary Trump reminds us, his lies are lethal, including for his followers:
"In my first book, Too Much and Never Enough, I wrote:
'If [Donald] can in anyway profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.'
That’s really all we need to know."
@wdlindsy@toad.socialEvan Hurst writes,
"Josh Marshall tweeted a screengrab last night from the New York Times, saying, 'This arrangement and editorial gloss may stand for, capture the journalism about the entire campaign.'”
The screengrab is below.
#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #NewYorkTimes #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/10
"We don’t know what kind of malignant sickness is metastasizing throughout the political newsroom at the Times. And we don’t know what’s going to happen on November 5.
But if Kamala Harris loses, the New York Times’s absolute failure to meet the historical moment — not just this year, but ever since 2015 — will be a big part of the story of how the United States of America ended up where it ended up."
#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #NewYorkTimes #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/11
Mary Trump notes that Washington Post has jumped on Kamala Harris for saying she would like to see Medicare expanded to cover long-term at-home care. WaPo asks where the money will come from.
Mary Trump responds:
"Here’s a question I never hear the corporate media ask: What is the cost of not addressing an issue that affects millions of Americans?"
#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #WashingtonPost #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/12
"In the wake of two devastating hurricanes, Helene and Milton, that’s a question we should be asking in context of climate change: What is the cost of failing to address the increasingly dangerous combination of increasing air temperatures, warming waters, and rising sea levels in terms of loss of human life, destruction of property, and the quality of our existence?"
#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #WashingtonPost #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence #Helene #Milton #hurricanes #ClimateChange
/13
Keith Owens puts the point clearly and succinctly:
"Your vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz isn’t just a vote for competence, sanity, and accountability. It is a vote for reality. Because, in reality, there is no such thing as alternative facts. Only truth and lies. And in reality, some lies can kill you."
#Trump #JDVance #KamalaHarris #TimWalz
/14
https://wearespeaking.substack.com/p/trump-response-to-hurricanes-shows
Todd Beeton cites Stuart Stevens' response to the two New York Times headlines about Trump and Harris that Josh Marshall highlighted yesterday (see /10 in this thread for that graphic). Stevens says,
"These two headlines should be studied in journalism classes for decades.
Trump headline could apply to a Nobel prize winner in genetic studies."
#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #NewYorkTimes #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/15
https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/harris-trump-media-double-standard
"They have already dangerously normalized a criminal con man grifter, making him just a coin flip away from the White House.
If Trump regains office, a substantial part of the blame will rest with our media, just as it did in 2016. How they sleep at night knowing this is beyond comprehension."
#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #NewYorkTimes #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence #normalization
/16
And this is exactly how capitalism 'succeeds': corporations dump all these 'external' costs on the rest of us.
"What is the cost of failing to address the increasingly dangerous combination of increasing air temperatures, warming waters, and rising sea levels in terms of loss of human life, destruction of property, and the quality of our existence?"
@Greengordon You're very right. That's an important point to make here: they dump the costs on all of us.
@wdlindsy We agree on many things concerning the upcoming election. One suggestion: when you include a quote, mention (at the same time) who actually said those words. I was going to boost what you wrote, but not knowing who said it kept me from doing so.
@RonSupportsYou I'm not sure which quote in particular you mean. The method I use is to link quotes, with the first instance always identifying whom I'm quoting. When I follow that instance with another excerpt in quotation marks, it means the person named in the previous posting(s) is the person speaking. So if you mean that /16 does not name the speaker, to find the name, you move back to /15 and you'll see that it's Todd Beeton. I hope this is clear, and sorry for the confusion.
@wdlindsy You wrote these words that I agree with: "They have already dangerously normalized a criminal con man grifter, ..." Yes, it was /16. Most people will not read 16 posts to discover who said those words. I prefer to name names in each of my posts that included a quote.
@RonSupportsYou I thought that might be the posting to which you were referring. It was Todd Beeton who wrote those words, not I. I always signify that I'm quoting someone by placing her/his statements in quotation marks. When an excerpt does not have an author's name, that means that the person speaking is the person named in the posting(s) immediately prior to the one with no author named. Because character space is very limited, I use that shorthand method and find most followers understand.
@RonSupportsYou I'm sorry if you find that method misleading. I would lose valuable characters if I repeated the name of an author in each subsequent posting quoting that author, though I can see how someone who hasn't looked closely at how I build threads could find this confusing, and I'm sorry for the confusion.
@wdlindsy If you follow my advice, then you too could have as many followers here as I have, oh wait, that was a bad example. Seriously, I try not to be misunderstood, and that includes editing each of my posts so that it has all of the essential information, including who said the words that are in my post. I understand your point, but this is why I like using the names of the people I quote whenever I quote them.
@RonSupportsYou Thanks for the suggestions. I'm truly not here to play the I-have-more-followers game. That has never interested me. I'm here to use what time and energy I have as an aging retired teacher to keep sharing and communicating with others. There are lots of ways I could perhaps do things "better," and draw more followers. I'm more concerned to use my energy to share and interact in the way that seems best to me.
@wdlindsy You're welcome. I understand. But your post could have given the man's name and still had room for his entire quote, with fewer hashtags, just like this:
Todd Beeton wrote: "They have already dangerously normalized a criminal con man grifter, making him just a coin flip away from the White House.
If Trump regains office, a substantial part of the blame will rest with our #media, just as it did in 2016. How they sleep at night knowing this is beyond comprehension." #NewYorkTimes
/16
Much of "the media" is directed by billionaire owners.
They sleep on comfortable piles of cash.
@EricLawton That's my take on what's going on, too.
@wdlindsy They sleep on cushy piles of ad money, I think.
@rjblaskiewicz Yes, I think that's a huge factor.
@wdlindsy They never ask how we're going to pay for corporate tax cuts either
@patricks Never. That question is ONLY ever asked of Democrats. Never Republicans.
maybe they are just too intellectual
@DJHDJH It's not clear which particular excerpt in the thread you're responding to. Since your comment follows Evan Hurst speaking about New York Times, I'll assume — but I may be wrong — that "they" refers to NYT.
To which I'd reply: Yes, they think they're highly intellectual.
But what we think about ourselves and the reality of ourselves is often highly disconnected, especially when arrogance distorts our self-understanding.
I find it fascinating to see how, despite deep thinking, you still can't grasp reality. It's like playing checkers in a game of chess.
@DJHDJH If the pronoun "you" refers to me directly, then I wonder how you grasp the reality of someone you don't even know. And why you assume that you grasp reality….
Oh no, it is you in general. I'm also talking about me and NYT.
Sorry, I'm dutch and we use the word you for you and more general like in someone.
@DJHDJH Thanks for your explanation, and I apologize that I did not see your point. I agree with you.
@wdlindsy good god just totally whitewash the fascism NYT.