"He knows what he is doing,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history who studies fascism and authoritarianism, said of Trump’s statement. “He chooses his words carefully.”
Yeah but not in the way this person thinks. I firmly believe a large chunk of trump’s success is his ability to bait the Left/media into frothing at the mouth and making us seem like we’re blowing things out of proportion.
It’s why he uses stuff like lying press, to a student of history, that’s a pretty clear Nazism. To a casual American, he’s just hating on the press. Similarly with this, to a casual American, he really means deporting illegal immigrants back to their home countries, whereas to this author, well, you read the article.
I think back to the debate and how well Harris baited trump, it was so nice to see it go the other way and it worked beautifully. Hopefully, we can be wiser than trump and avoid taking his latest and future bait attempts.
I don’t think he’s a genius but knows one game very well, and it’s treating the Left/media the same way I treated my younger sister when I was an asshole; wind her up, watch her melt down, over-react and get in trouble.
And we take the bait EVERY. GODDAMN. TIME.
He’s not imitating Nazis by accident and he’s not doing it because he’s a Nazi. He’s doing it because it makes us make ourselves look like hysterical children.
Edit: It’s not 78D chess, it’s the easiest game to play. Couldn’t be much more simple as far as politics go.
He’s been following the Nazi playbook for years now. One of their top plays there was discrediting the media, the Lügenpresse. Doesn’t help that half of the news outlets bent down to kiss his feet and Elon bought up and intentionally tanked one of the biggest social media outlets in the world. The rest are apparently all liars who are out to get him.
Next is make your average working class scared. You do this by giving them something to be scared of, then make them mad at it, then offer a solution to the problem people didn’t even know they had. Just takes a quick read on the US Holocaust Museum before it all starts sounding super familiar.
Oh no, I get that. I think he’s echoing that stuff intentionally but more to make us cry fascist etc. He loves our reaction to the dictator but only on day one schtick, his side sees it as a joke, we take it deadly serious and I worry median voters think “he was already president, we still have a democracy, these guys are over-reacting.”
We can be simultaneously right AND lose the persuasion game. I’d rather win the persuasion game.m as that matters more than being right.
I think about Jan 6, with horrifies Democratic leaning folks but to a large swathe of the public, it doesn’t seem to register as a concern compared to inflation etc.
