I need a little help. A "reality check" of sorts. Someone in the big Trump thread said something to the extent that they felt weird, surreal, like they were questioning the truth or whatever. I remember reading that post the other day and found myself saying it hasn't happened to me. Until about 10 minutes ago...

Are Trump and GOP running a massive game on this country, or am I just imagining things?

It feels as if the effort is coordinated, but it also feels more widespread than it should be. They haven't accomplished any of their agenda yet, but it seems like sooo many negative things happened. And it feels like it's getting worse as we go on.

WTH am I experiencing? Please fix me.

Do I need one of those Presidential "Stay strong, Mike Flynn" messages?

My probably-not-at-all-helpful contribution:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...e8c_story.html

“I’ll guarantee you that’s what it is. . . . The Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp [opposition] research that they had on Trump,” McCarthy said with a laugh.

Ryan asked who the Russians “delivered” the opposition research to.

“There’s . . . there’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy said, drawing some laughter. “Swear to God,” McCarthy added.

“This is an off the record,” Ryan said.

Some lawmakers laughed at that.

“No leaks, all right?,” Ryan said, adding: “This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

“That’s how you know that we’re tight,” Scalise said.

“What’s said in the family stays in the family,” Ryan added.

Same Scalise from the baseball thing?

yeah, he's whip. he's whippin these guys, telling them to keep their mouths shut about trump-russia. and if you're really tight you can talk about trump-russia all you want, but it stays between top republicans in congress because this kind of thing CANNOT leak to the public

Reality check this: too many whiny butthurt losers itf aorn.

You're tuned in to the final season of "America", expect some amazing twists.

Thanks for that. One thing stood out.

But THIS time is different. What they believe is never what they aimed for. It was usually about 15-20 percent of their ambitions because of rules, norms, ethics and laws. If those things were bent by either party, it would maybe gain another 5%. The constraints and institutions always held though. There was this invisible rubber wall to stop things from getting completely untenable.

Then Donald Trump came along. He broke the rubber wall. Things haven't been the same since. The floodgates opened and they all realized (from Trump) how many more goals they could achieve if they pushed harder; much harder. By ignoring a bunch of rules, norms, ethics and laws, the consequences would be less than the rewards.

Meanwhile, Trump has his own ambitions. While putting everyone around him in extremely uncomfortable positions and egging them on, he also decided to increase his power, to unlock more potential. So he steps up his attack on institutions, and erodes democracy from all angles, Putin-style.

This is all frustrating enough, but there are other Russian techniques used to bring down democratic systems. Namely, INFORMATION WARFARE. The attack on truth is what's gotten to me. Are we past the point of no return? If not, how close are we? If Mueller loses, we are ****ed pretty hard. So what do we do, just wait and hope?

Educating the masses isn't working because nobody is willing to see the truth. Protesting isn't working because it's being easily brushed off by them and more protesters on the left are being arrested. And checks and balances are failing more rapidly than ever before.

The despair + clouded truth is torture. Maybe because I'm fighting hard, refusing to let myself normalize all of this. But I question if it's worth the aggravation.

**** man.

Was reading a book about Syria recently and there was this passage about life under Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez (who ruled from 1971-2000) and it reminded me of things people have been saying here about Trump's America. I think it perhaps illustrates a few points.:

• What has been said on here before - that what I take Our House and CPHoya to be talking about go hand in glove, the tactics to undermine discourse are precisely aimed at getting through an elitie's agenda - whether that tactic is deliberately engaged in or just done through instinct or learned experience.
• The techniques around consistently 'lying' (or talking nonsense) to remove the possibility of meaningful debate are not new, they've undoubtedly been done many times in the past.
• That doesn't change the fact they're very serious, and very effective.
• There's possibly no point of no return (I think life under a dictatorship using these techniques must be worse than the US currently), but the ways out might not be very easy or successful.

That's the thing, over and over again. If this **** was coming from anywhere but the White House and President, we could just laugh/brush it off. But it's not. Lives in danger, freedoms in danger, ON BOTH SIDES, and they are actively pushing for it.

.

Two things.

1. RE: that 1984 quote, I think we're far more into a combination of Brave New World and Idiocracy than Nineteen Eighty-Four. That the principle organs of modern state propaganda are Trump's twitter, Russian authored absurdities in Facebook news feeds, Brietbart, TMZ and Fox and Friends should be proof the dystopian future is scads of people drugged (literally in many cases, but meant figuratively here) and distracted by Pavolovian tactics rather than highly skilled and organized uber propagandists directed by an all-powerful state. America is dying by morons slavish to titillation and anger and pent-up social rages and other related grievances, not being dominated by expert puppeteers using sophisticated mind control tactics and language control ala 1984.

2. CPHoya's 4 failures of the left seems to leave out co-option -- that a lot of the left is completely complicit in ultimately defending most of the worst parts of the consensus that dominate the modern world and have led to social stagnation, widespread segregation, economic disparities and frustration. Feelings which have been leveraged by charlatans and the especially unscrupulous for their own ends.

We can call that the Nader Clause and make it the fifth failure of the left.

I'm not even sure if "state propaganda" is appropriate terminology. That sort of implies that Trump has a propaganda ministry that's directing the media in a top-down fashion. Really, it's more like the tail is wagging the dog: Trump is getting his talking points from Fox & Friends, as well as botique outlets like Breitbart. ofc, Fox will reliably repeat whatever message Trump wants to put out, but that's to satisfy their viewers and not because they have some marching orders from Trump. And then there's the online Trump slappies who independently feed each other self-reinforcing memes. It's basically a very complex ecosystem of propaganda that's ultimately consumer-driven and largely independent of government control.

Like, way back in the summer of '16, Fox was actually briefly anti-Trump when they thought he was bad for the Republican brand. Once it became clear that there was a huge consumer demand for Trumpism, they dived all-in. If guys like Ailes or Priebus were pulling the strings from above, Trump would have neve won the primary.

Right. I think that's the ultimate Reality Check for the OP. The bolded words are critical. And I think many watching America from inside and outside miss it.

The OP is coming to terms with the False Consensus effect -- and the existence of that effect is a huge problem on the left. The idea that we had all these norms and shared values, and many have just come now to realize that most of it was fiction and ephemeral, if not disposable -- at least open to negotiation. And from there, plenty of people like the OP are questioning their sanity that the world is topsy turvy because there's tens of millions of highly reflexive ideologues that are driving a political party and really, a lot of extremely powerful entities like basically all three branches of the federal government headlong into ever more strident right-wing extremism. In many ways Trump is merely rent-seeking off of all of this energy for cheap scams and grifts to enrich himself. He as much a leaf in the wind for all of this as he is a mini-Hitler.

But that's the point. Trump is very much the symptom, not the cause. I think you nailed it: the fact is that the increasing evolution away from a well-functioning liberal democracy is not very top down. And while it's fair to say it's being foisted on the ~50-55% of voters who didn't vote for the GOP, along with lots of non-voters -- the fact is, the very dependable Republican voters and hardcore right-wing ideologues are relishing this. This is their project. And they have been at it for a long, long time. They want to dispossess liberals of their stake in the country and mold it into a lightly-taxed libertopia for culturally approved whites, and a fascist authoritarian state that menaces everyone else.

Why the right-wing moves ever in that direction and are able to accumulate so much political power, but faces precious little corrective forces -- that is the question liberals and the left have to ask themselves in a very serious and meaningful way. And I do think much of the leadership and opinion elites have absolutely been co-opted into buying into meta-principles (low tax, deregulate, privatize, extreme scrutiny of government services and welfare state) that are ultimately creating a context and an environment where paranoia and anger thrive. I mean, consider that our ideal President just about 5 years ago created a giant ****ing commission to study and ultimately reduce deficit spending. How the **** did we let that happen? Forget Trump for a minute, hard as that is to do. We need to get really introspective and think long and hard about how that became a priority for a popular Democratic President successfully coming out of a giant destructive recession. Forget 2016; forgetting Comey and visits to Wisconsin. That Simpson Bowles Commission is the kind of **** that the left should be losing sleep over. That is emblematic of so much wrong with the modern left, far more suggestive of a collective ideological failure than Trump. The country has been socially degrading in many places for quite some time; wealth fleeing certain areas, economic disparities rising, institutions allowed to crumble, and replaced with basically nothing of meaning. The right responded by angrily scapegoating their political opponents and the enemies of white tribalism. The President closest to our ideological ideal commissioned a bipartisan blue ribbon panel to study how to cut entitlement spending responsibly. My ****ing lord.

In sum: The principle problem of our generation landed at our feet -- a fast evolving world with huge economic transitions resulted in drastically unequal resource distribution -- coupled with the predictable human migration to follow the transfer of capital -- and the left ****ing turtled. Or cashed in. Or both.

I realize I sorta hijacked the OP for my hobby horse but I feel like leftist navel gazing about how Trump is making us crazy is ultimately a distraction from the real work ahead of us. Trump is an inane idiot; that he can make someone feel despair despite being brazenly incompetent and accomplishing basically nothing of consequence is nonetheless understandable. I get it.

But forget him -- at least when examining your own mental state. He's a symptom of a very poisoned, toxic ecosystem that is populated by tens of millions of angry people with a surprising but undeniably large amount of political power. Our goal is to beat that back, not Trump. Doing that requires first recognizing our mistakes and fixing them. Aggrandizing Trump's powers to effect our mental state is decidedly not very introspective or helpful.

You're experiencing life with a 24/7 for-profit news cycle in a country where Red vs Blue pays the bills for a LOT of influential people.

Take a step back and examine what has actually happened so far, realize that the sky NOT in fact falling, and you'll be able to sleep again.

Dem goes in, dem goes out. Republican in, republican out. Rinse/repeat while the actual backbone of society (people who are too busy to give very few ****s about politics) keep things running on the ground.

You will never get a seat at that table, so stop worrying about what the man in the high castle is doing, and focus your efforts on local things you can actually influence. If you do a good job at that, you might even make your way up the influence ladder and get a seat at the national table some day.

Stop letting Fox, CNN, and MSNBC affect your anxiety levels. They exist not for YOUR benefit, but their own.

Actual top-down state-driven propaganda tends to be a real flop with consumer audiences. Like, they buy it because they have to, but in places like North Korea or Nazi Germany there's always a huge black market for foreign newspapers and movies and etc. That's not because the people are necessarily subversives, but because state-made material is always bland, formulaic, and uninteresting.

I remember seeing a North Korea documentary where this family in Pyongyang was watching illegal bootleg Disney movies. They really weren't seditious, they just wanted some pop culture that wasn't another boring Korean War drama.

Update: The weird feeling went away sometime Tuesday afternoon. So basically, it came on suddenly and lasted less than a day.

Good riddance POTUS & GOP. You WILL have your time in the barrel (Disclaimer: no foreknowledge).

If it's any consolation, I think the Trump presidency is making his life even worse than he is making ours.

Regarding Dvaut, it's noteworthy that the issues the GOP seems to be running on, and largely failing to implement, are mainly out of the 1980s. They want to, for the most part, "finish" the job Reagan started. That is what they know, that is what they grew up on, and that is what they have consensus for in their party.

They are like classic rock fans who think music peaked with Led Zepplin and ended with Arrowsmith circa 1980. However, the world has moved on. The rich are no longer "burdened" with fairly high taxes; in fact, they've accumulated significantly more wealth in the last 30 years. The kids realize this and are jamming to the new tunes, but the GOP is being led by 80 year olds who are like the proverbial Japanese soldier on an island fighting 15 years after WWII is over. (Even Ryan learned everything he knows before 1985).

So, if it seems like your're getting bad classic rock covers while much of the rest of the world is jamming to techno and Katy Perry or Arcade Fire, or even Taylor Swith, you are.

As for Trump, he's Meatloaf.

You're not alone. I'm reminded of the people that suggested that Americans write down, the day after the election, or the day of the inauguration, what for them would count as a step too far in terms of attacking democracy... Because it slowly gets normalized as you go on. I'm feeling that way to some extent, and I have to fight it. I also feel like more and more I'm looking around as Trump/Spicer/Huckabee-Sanders/whoever says something absurd, like, "IS ANYONE ELSE HEARING THIS??? WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE????"

But it's always the same people upset - just the left. The right thinks this is fine. Then I keep asking myself, am I overreacting? Or am I correct, but the right is just cool with it? Like this is what they wanted all along? I think to some extent, that's true, as CPHoya pointed out... To some extent, there's a lot of naiveté among those who a few years ago we'd consider moderates that were right of center... So they're kind of okay with this because they don't think it's going where we see it going.

There are also those all over the political spectrum who are just too busy to worry too much, they're too focused on their jobs/families/lives, and they figure if it REALLY gets bad, everyone will be freaking out and that hasn't happened yet.

They're either utterly incompetent or testing the boundaries. Hopefully they're just incompetent, and there are plenty of signs that point that way. If they're testing the boundaries, ****'s about to get really real.

The current situation sort of reminds me of that scene you get in some alien movies, when the human heroes have taken shelter and secured it as best they could... But they're kind of worried there may be a way in... And the aliens are scurrying about, trying to find the weak point to attack. They're just probing the structure, looking for the easiest way to destroy it/kill everyone. Was it Signs when the one kept banging on the front door over and over, but it was just a distraction? That's sort of like Trump's tweeting in this analogy. Meanwhile, how far could they push the Muslim ban? (They now have one implemented with less media coverage than before, and it's OUTSIDE the 90 day window they claimed they needed. Is there any restriction on how long this is in effect?) How far can they push healthcare? (This one they seem to keep getting their phones ringing off the hooks when they go too far.) How far can they push tax cuts?

Meanwhile, let's not forget that they've trashed all sorts of regulatory agencies already by appointing people who want to get rid of them.

Unfortunately, we have about as many options at our disposal as the humans in an alien movie. Like, we better hope to find that secret weakness that leads to the end of this quickly, or we're going to be overrun.

It's either that or they're completely and totally incompetent.... REALLY hoping for incompetence.