On Thursday, June 6, 2024 at 1:50:26 PM UTC+2 John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Jun 5, 2024 at 12:17 PM PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote: *> I think embracing more direct, brutal honesty could really help.* *I think it's a lot more complicated than that. Although no previous American politician has lied virtually every time he opens his mouth as Trump has, all politicians lie and they do it for one simple reason, it works. I realize that way back in 1976 when Jimmy Carter was running for president. Carter said in a Playboy interview that although he had never cheated on his wife, "I've looked at many women with lust and thus committed adultery many times in my heart.” The conservative religious right was OUTRAGED by his statement. They wanted him to say "I've never had the slightest urge to even look at any woman other than my wife regardless of how beautiful she was" even though if he had done so they would have known he was lying through his teeth. Carter made the mistake of telling the truth and was severely punished for it, he almost lost the election as a result. Convicted felon Donald Trump is amoral and monumentally stupid but he never made Carter's mistake.* *A mob of mindless Trump accolades like it when their leader lies to them even when they know for a fact that he's lying, provided it's a pretty lie that reinforces their prejudices and illogical reasoning. If Trump ever shut off the spew of lies emanating from his mouth like water through a fire hose his movement would collapse in a matter of days.* Trivially, the sweet lie is more digestible than the uncomfortable truth. Trump, on the other hand, has *mastered the art of the appealing lie*, reinforcing the biases of his supporters, and it's a tough act to counter. Trump framing himself as the “Crypto President” puts Biden in another tricky spot. Should he imitate Trump and endorse something as ambiguous as cryptocurrencies? Advocates hail crypto as the future, while skeptics see it as a Ponzi scheme. Biden can address this by highlighting the importance of stability and regulation in financial systems, subtly questioning the wisdom of jumping on every trendy bandwagon. Again his PR team fails to score points with nuance: Does Donald have the slightest idea what Blockchain is? In the end, Biden can maintain integrity and still counter Trump by being direct, empathetic, and solution-oriented. And yes, I agree it's complicated, which is why I said "a bit more": it's also why any politician speaking in "all CAPS" every day will approach the real world task of changing a lightbulb with a *CHAINSAW.* And yes, the chainsaw is indeed cool... But it won't stabilize prices or make them drop. It won't give us stable crypto returns. His PR team should work towards projecting a more genuine image and addressing these concerns, without falling into the trap of deceitful populism. In a way, it's also not so complicated: if I saw more media headlines in style of your last 2 sentences, I'd be less concerned. Instead I see all this "2 sides to the story" bullshit, where hatred is given a seat at the table of democratic discourse. That's why he declares proudly that he will pull out of treaties etc. With the emotional maturity of a nine year old (it insults the nine year olds, sorry), he wonders why other non-authoritarian leaders don't follow his bleech chainsaw style proposals. It works with the crowds and on television, so why not here? And all of these discursive efforts to publish enough about Trumpism to give it the appearance of a doctrine... Media and naive assumptions about digitalization are at fault here too. And I want my money back from most of my news subscriptions, for some years now. Both team blue and red. Same if, as mentioned above, a news outlet feeds "2 sides of the story", it makes money but wreaks havoc in moving all the reference points in the zealot, isolationist, and finally military direction. Let's all build more weapons and force the economic growth that way... I mean, what did we all expect? That THAT kind of discourse just evaporates due to its absurdity? No, we've seen that expectation proven wrong too many times. Mastering the art of the appealing lie... and slowly believing it yourself. It's ethically fascinating... Is he "responsible" or did we all somehow fail to get to such a position? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a96c4509-5e46-4b5c-8904-9f168e546008n%40googlegroups.com.
