Journalists have trouble covering norm-breaking concepts and we have a few here: 1. the large degree of white nationalism in WH with Steve Bannon/Breitbart 2. Donald Trump’s mental status (he is not normal) 3. Trump as chaos agent. They need to step up their game, call lies lies, be more adversarial. They need to see Trump for what he is: not a well, normal person.
The hard core Trump supporters are not the focus of exposing his lies. It's everyone else. And there are a lot more of everyone else.
Jeb Lund/Esquire has it right:
Stop Waiting for Trump to Start Making Sense
Every malignant troll—95 percent of the time, it's a he—who changed his Twitter username to Deplorable Fuckface to "piss off the libs" feeds off impotent moral outrage and public despair. He and his leaders are people who feel so disempowered by (or eager to exploit) women's equality and the perception of minorities as full human beings that they brought on the reign of a world-historical virulent boob just because they hate the same changing cultural signifiers.
Logging onto social media to announce that you feel terrified and heartsick just vindicates these people. Your fearful tingling sensation tells them that it's working. Friends on your side of the ideological fence see the hopelessness and feel a pang of empathy. But any attempt at broader entreaty to the people inspiring this feeling is founded on a mistake.
You cannot shame the shameless; you can't appeal to an inborn trait someone doesn't have.
"When they go low, we go high" is something you can say when someone's agreed to sit at the table with you, but Trump and the people who revel in his omnidirectional crass abusiveness and opportunism don't have to go anywhere to hit low. Their resentment and bullying will always find the lowest elevation. When they go low, let them—like the bully who eventually trips one day on the playground, it makes it easier for everyone in the rest of the class to see how small his size, how few his number, how low his road, and how everyone, together, can defeat him.
HuffPost:
Americans Don’t Buy The Claim That Trump’s Inauguration Drew Record Crowds
Just 7 percent think the event was better attended than Obama’s 2009 swearing-in.
Yes, it matters that the truth is exposed. it makes a difference. people get it at their own speed, but Lincoln was right. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Karen Tumulty/WaPo:
Trump’s disregard for the truth threatens his ability to govern
Until Trump’s comments Monday night about illegal voters, it had appeared that the new administration might be regaining its footing after that wobbly start.
No, it did not. This is true only for reporters who project normalcy because they want to believe it. That’s not reporting. That’s wish fulfillment.
The failure by Trump and his team to maintain that discipline will do long-term damage, said Matthew Dowd, who was the chief strategist for George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. “I don’t think he realizes how much he is hurting himself.”
Tyler Cowan/Bloomberg:
By requiring subordinates to speak untruths, a leader can undercut their independent standing, including their standing with the public, with the media and with other members of the administration. That makes those individuals grow more dependent on the leader and less likely to mount independent rebellions against the structure of command. Promoting such chains of lies is a classic tactic when a leader distrusts his subordinates and expects to continue to distrust them in the future.
Another reason for promoting lying is what economists sometimes call loyalty filters. If you want to ascertain if someone is truly loyal to you, ask them to do something outrageous or stupid. If they balk, then you know right away they aren’t fully with you. That too is a sign of incipient mistrust within the ruling clique, and it is part of the same worldview that leads Trump to rely so heavily on family members.
In this view, loyalty tests are especially frequent for new hires and at the beginning of new regimes, when the least is known about the propensities of subordinates. You don’t have to view President Trump as necessarily making a lot of complicated calculations, rather he may simply be replicating tactics that he found useful in his earlier business and media careers.
Robin Wright/ New Yorker on Trump at the CIA:
Trump’s remarks caused astonishment and anger among current and former C.I.A. officials. The former C.I.A. director John Brennan, who retired on Friday, called it a “despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of C.I.A.’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes,” according to a statement released through a former aide. Brennan said he thought Trump “should be ashamed of himself.”
Crocker, who was among the last to see Ames and the local C.I.A. team alive in Beirut, was “appalled” by Trump’s comments. “Whatever his intentions, it was horrible,” Crocker, who went on to serve as the U.S. Ambassador in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Kuwait, told me. “As he stood there talking about how great Trump is, I kept looking at the wall behind him—as I’m sure everyone in the room was, too. He has no understanding of the world and what is going on. It was really ugly.”
“Why,” Crocker added, “did he even bother? I can’t imagine a worse Day One scenario. And what’s next?”
NBC:
Some Experts Say Trump Team’s Falsehoods Are Classic ‘Gaslighting’
And while Trump's controversial campaign comments have spawned a new genre of of fact-checking columns, many of his supporters predicted he'd become somehow more presidential, and less likely to be provocative, once he took office.
So why even do it?
The behavior has all the signs of "gaslighting", says clinical psychologist Bryant Welch, who wrote a 2008 book entitled "State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind".
Gaslighting refers to a 1944 film in which a murdering husband manipulates and confuses his wife by dimming the gas lights in their home and then denying it's happening.
"The very state of confusion they are creating is a political weapon in and of itself," Welch told NBC News.
"If you make people confused, they are vulnerable. By definition they don't know what to do," added Welch, who has not personally examined any of the Trump team.
East Lansing Info:
East Lansing Board of Education has passed a resolution urging all U.S. senators to vote ‘no’ on the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education as proposed by President Trump.
The motion, proposed by Karen Hoene and seconded by Erin Graham, mentioned DeVos’s lack of experience with public schools, and her history of support of non-public charter schools. They also mentioned her “troubling history of financially supporting organizations whose actions are detrimental to LGBTQ students.”
The full document can be found here.
Gizmodo on why scientists are speaking out (examples below):
Science’s ultimate goal is to establish truth and facts by accumulating evidence. When the administration chooses to speak falsely to the American people, it’s up to scientists, the ones who work tirelessly to figure out what’s true, to stand up for evidence-based reasoning. “I think that if we see a situation where people are being encouraged to ignore objective reality, it’s kind of improtant to push back against that,” Katherine (Katie) Mack, astrophysicist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, told Gizmodo, “as people who have an interest in the idea that we can understand and interact with the world as it is.”
Kevin Folta/Blogspot talks to us about an ongoing attempt to suppress science:
So why do well-funded industry front groups want to confiscate my correspondence with the media? Beats me, but I have several hypotheses:
1. Smearing Science-Friendly Journalists. We know that they used my emails to develop damaging false narratives, using complicit reporters and venues like the New York Times. I fully expect that they'll use these emails to make it look like I share cozy relationships with the journalists in question, and then claim that those associations mean they can't be trusted to report science accurately. The people targeted report objectively on biotechnology and incorporate my two cents into their independent syntheses, or not. Activists seek to destroy the perception of their independent credibility and journalistic integrity.
Of course, I've only met these folks here and there, served on panels with them, participated in conferences, maybe had phone calls. I had a hamburger with one once in Davis, CA, sushi with another in Gainesville, FL. Nothing terribly exciting, but it will be blown up into wild, evil collusion.
2. Dissuade Journalists from Talking to Scientists. Those that report science are less likely to do it if their questions and sources will end up as part of broad public records searches. Heck, the same journalists use records requests all the time and appreciate transparency that FOIA provides. But when private emails turn into the basis of broad fishing trips, looking for "gotchas" and cherry-picked bits that can be pulled from context with intent to permanently harm reputations? It is the abuse of transparency law that journalists appropriately decry, and likely to turn a reporter away from my university if they have a question or concern in a hot-topic area.
3. Chilling Science Communication. If scientists are afraid to talk, and nobody is going to report it, it ensures complete suppression of the scientific message. They both gag the voice and cut the wires. Severing all ties between scientists and the best journalists is their goal, as activist messages fail to find publication outside of their own websites.
Peter Broks/Wordpress:
Science communication has failed
Rearranging the furniture in the White House are a President who said climate change was a hoax, and a Vice-President who does not accept the theory of evolution. The rest of Trump’s cabinet is an equally deplorable bunch when it comes to science (or, indeed, anything else when it comes to being decent and humane).
I’m not blaming science communication for the election of Trump. But Trump’s Presidency is evidence that science communication has failed.
You might say that this has little to do with science communication, that Trump won the election on other issues but this only shows that science-based issues were not seen as important enough – also a failure.
And Brits should not be so smug either, with their vote for Brexit and their “had enough of experts”.
What we have clearly seen in recent months is that facts are not enough no matter how well they are communicated. The campaign to remain in the E.U. had all the facts, all the statistics, all the information. In contrast, the leave campaign was built on lies, half-truths and prejudices. The U.K. voted to leave.
Facts are not enough. Science communication is not enough. More is not enough.
How many years have we spent trying “to get the message across”? How many years of “ooooh”, “aaahhh”, “wow”…..applause? Failure.
I’m not suggesting that we stop trying to disseminate accurate science. Far from it. In this “post-truth” age of “fake news” and “alternative facts”, the need for good science communication has never been more urgent.
What I am suggesting is that we need to change our approach, not just a better version, or an upgrade – a radical shift, not pimp my sci-comm.
Guardian:
Affluent Trump backers speak out: 'I'm hoping for some amazing things'
Much attention has focused on the lower-income voters who helped elect the president but Trump’s supporters are more financially secure than many believe
The level of hatred out there is unprecedented. She [Hillary Clinton] called us terrible names. She attacked Trump’s supporters. But we took it as a badge of honor. We became that basket of deplorables. I said: “I’m deplorable and proud of it.” When he won, I tweeted to my followers, “thank you for being brave”. It took courage to vote for him.
I have the right as an American citizen to support whomever I want – I can support Satan if I want. The thing is, I respect you for your opinion but you must respect me for mine. People said to me, “What’s the matter with you? You’re a racist, you’re a hater, how can you support him?” Then they start getting emotional and shouting and going in directions that make no sense. And I just say, “I can support whomever I please. I’m an American.”
