Corrupted Reality

If humans are wired for distorted thinking, then it's easy to see how Fuckface gets a pass for his crimes from so many. Amanda Marcotte explains:

In the right-wing imagination, Democrats do evil things, even commit murder, on a regular basis and get away with it. So too many conservatives have convinced themselves that it's only fair to let [Dear Leader] get away with similar things, even though the bad things he's doing are all too real and not from the realm of fevered conspiracy theory.

We can choose to believe anything we want, but over time truth is established through what Jonathan Rauch calls the constitution of knowledge. Trolling has become widespread and von Clownstick is the master.

[He] showed himself to be an attentive student of disinformation and its operative principle: Reality is what you can get away with. ... [L]ying reflects a strategy, not merely a character flaw or pathology.

Helping to swing the election shows how much damage can be done, but Rauch is optimistic.

[Will] the trolls triumph? I doubt it. Weaponized trolling has enjoyed the advantage of surprise, but as that diminishes, the troll army will encounter a disadvantage. Trolls have swarms, but the constitution of knowledge has institutions.

Of course, the question is how much time we have for the truth to succeed. Meanwhile we're paying a terrible price with our mental health the longer we're immersed the current political cesspool. Jennifer Panning refers to "[Fuckface] Anxiety Disorder" as characterized by

increased worry, obsessive thought patterns, muscle tension and obsessive preoccupation with the news.

Check, check, check and check. I suppose there's some small comfort in having the diagnosis even if it may yet prove to be fatal.

Update (November 12):  Amanda Marcotte says there's no point to arguing with trolls who "have openly declared that they don't care about reason or facts". Shaming might be the best strategy.

I find [the question of how to deal with them] frustrating, mainly because it assumes that for every problem, there must be a solution — an assumption that the evidence simply doesn't support.

Update (November 25):  Michael Hayne offers ten pieces of bullshit that followers of Dear Leader think are true.

Update (February 23, 2019):  While the Mueller investigation may or may not be winding down, Lucian Truscott explains why that's not good news for von Clownstick.

[T]he thing that should worry [Fuckface] the most is that when Mueller’s investigation ends, the muzzles come off the coterie of criminals [he] has surrounded himself with. As long as Mueller had people like Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, Felix Sater, and David Pecker cooperating with his investigation, they were constrained from what they could share with the Congress and the press about what they know.

Take the muzzle off the creeps and hustlers [Dear Leader] surrounded himself with, and he’s going to come out looking like the scuzzball lying thieving lowlife he is.

But Amanda Marcotte expands on how conservative voters have been trained to ignore all that.

First, Republicans normalized the idea that all politicians are corrupt by electing a series of deeply corrupt politicians themselves. ,,, [B]y the time Bush administration lies had led us into the disastrous quagmire in Iraq, your average conservative had not only become adept at making excuses for political corruption, but had fully accepted that doing so is a normal and expected aspect of supporting the Republican Party.

Second, Republican politicians trained their base to think of investigations as bad-faith political power grabs by themselves using investigations primarily, if not solely, for this purpose. ... All these endless, pointless investigations and scandal-mongering over Democratic behavior that wasn't corrupt, much less criminal, has primarily served to indoctrinate the conservative masses into believing that "investigations" are never truly serious, but just a tool for partisans trying to score political points. They are now throughly primed to interpret the investigations into [von Clownstick's] very real corruption as nothing more than Democrats seeking revenge for decades of mistreatment by Republican hacks.