…in which we both asked one another, “What realistic thing would have to occur for Donald Trump’s base to finally turn on him?” We had to add the word “realistic” to avoid fantasy elements like him magically turning into Voldemort or revealing he is a lizard alien from Tau Lacertae IX. We played this game for several years, and as various events unfolded we had to keep updating our responses. I eventually landed on the answer that nothing he could say or do would cause his followers to turn on him.
What’s happening now with the whole Epstein thing has me wondering. I know that we in the resistance have said many times, “we’ve got him this time!” only to find whatever scandal du jour has failed to stick. (John Oliver even has a meme on this phenomenon). With that said, this particular scandal seems to not be going away quite as quickly as the many, many, many previous ones.
I will admit here and now I never, ever expected this.
That’s not quite true–in the game with my wife, the action I said Trump could take that would be most likely to anger his followers would be if he turned on them first. For example, if he was heard at a rally on a hot mike saying he couldn’t believe how stupid/ugly/gullible his followers truly were, or something. I jettisoned that argument, because I reasoned that he could wiggle his way out of that somehow.
I did not predict that the Jeffrey Epstein case would be the thing that cost him his followers, nor that he would castigate them so viciously in print for pursuing the issue.
Now, I will admit freely that there is still much he can and probably will do to wiggle out of this one. First, he can probably just wait this out. I suspect that’s what he wants to do, though he is not helping himself by constantly bringing it back up. His followers have shown that they do not have the will or perhaps the capacity to remember things well. Second, and this is not necessarily incompatible with the first strategy, he can distract with something else. Right now, there’s not much new happening–ICE raids, though brutal, inhumane, cruel, and ineffective, are not new to his base. The attack on Iran was too quick. The war in Ukraine continues. Tariffs are old hat and his base doesn’t really understand them anyway. He needs something very new, and I suspect his team is combing the news to find anything to distract the audience from the fallen trapeze artist in the center ring.
The third option, which is perhaps just a variation on the second, is what I think he’s testing out now. The insane claim that the “Epstein files” so-called are are invention of the Obama administration is, to me, a preemptive salvo to do damage control while trying to tar his enemies with a new lie. I think he knows what the evidence shows regarding his relationship with Epstein (how can he not?) and he is preparing to reveal doctored evidence attacking his enemies. That doctored evidence will immediately be shown to be false and libelous, but the waters will have been successfully muddied by that time. “There’s no way to know the truth,” will be the collective response, as Trump and his supporters point to falsified evidence as truth.
This has always been what upsets me quite a lot about the last several years–the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth anymore. It’s not that people believe Trump that truly bothers me (don’t get me wrong, I am baffled to my core at how people can believe him) it’s that the very concept of truth is under attack. That was the real horror of O’Brien’s words in Orwell’s 1984. The complete and utter destruction of a human being in Winston Smith was and always will be a tragedy beyond measure, but it’s no accident that Orwell chose to have his doomed protagonist work at the Ministry of Truth. If you don’t know the novel, the protagonist’s job is to rewrite history so that the leader’s positions and pronouncements are always correct. In this job, he has to simultaneously know that he is lying and also accept the new truth he himself has created. In Orwell’s created language, Newspeak, this is called doublethink: the ability to hold two contradictory versions of the truth simultaneously and apply whichever one is necessary for any given situation. O’Brien saying that the stars are points of light a few miles away and which can be blotted out if desired but that they are also millions of miles away if needed for nautical navigation is a case in point. As badly as Winston is treated in the novel, and as much as he is wholly destroyed as a person, the very concept of objective reality is another casualty of the Party. It’s not just that they need you to believe in them, or just replace your beliefs with theirs–they need you to be untethered to the concept itself. (The Party does something similar to the emotion of love between two people, and I can’t help but think those are connected, but let’s not explore that right now).
So, anyway. I think Trump is trying once again not just to get his followers to believe him and not believe those who speak out against him–he’s setting up an attack on the notion that anyone can know anything at all. That’s how I think he plans to get out of this Epstein thing.
I’m curious to see if it works this time like it has so many times in the past. I have a sinking feeling that it will–my name, after all, is O’Brien.
Be seeing you!
What’s happening now with the whole Epstein thing has me wondering. I know that we in the resistance have said many times, “we’ve got him this time!” only to find whatever scandal du jour has failed to stick. (John Oliver even has a meme on this phenomenon). With that said, this particular scandal seems to not be going away quite as quickly as the many, many, many previous ones.
I will admit here and now I never, ever expected this.
That’s not quite true–in the game with my wife, the action I said Trump could take that would be most likely to anger his followers would be if he turned on them first. For example, if he was heard at a rally on a hot mike saying he couldn’t believe how stupid/ugly/gullible his followers truly were, or something. I jettisoned that argument, because I reasoned that he could wiggle his way out of that somehow.
I did not predict that the Jeffrey Epstein case would be the thing that cost him his followers, nor that he would castigate them so viciously in print for pursuing the issue.
Now, I will admit freely that there is still much he can and probably will do to wiggle out of this one. First, he can probably just wait this out. I suspect that’s what he wants to do, though he is not helping himself by constantly bringing it back up. His followers have shown that they do not have the will or perhaps the capacity to remember things well. Second, and this is not necessarily incompatible with the first strategy, he can distract with something else. Right now, there’s not much new happening–ICE raids, though brutal, inhumane, cruel, and ineffective, are not new to his base. The attack on Iran was too quick. The war in Ukraine continues. Tariffs are old hat and his base doesn’t really understand them anyway. He needs something very new, and I suspect his team is combing the news to find anything to distract the audience from the fallen trapeze artist in the center ring.
The third option, which is perhaps just a variation on the second, is what I think he’s testing out now. The insane claim that the “Epstein files” so-called are are invention of the Obama administration is, to me, a preemptive salvo to do damage control while trying to tar his enemies with a new lie. I think he knows what the evidence shows regarding his relationship with Epstein (how can he not?) and he is preparing to reveal doctored evidence attacking his enemies. That doctored evidence will immediately be shown to be false and libelous, but the waters will have been successfully muddied by that time. “There’s no way to know the truth,” will be the collective response, as Trump and his supporters point to falsified evidence as truth.
This has always been what upsets me quite a lot about the last several years–the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth anymore. It’s not that people believe Trump that truly bothers me (don’t get me wrong, I am baffled to my core at how people can believe him) it’s that the very concept of truth is under attack. That was the real horror of O’Brien’s words in Orwell’s 1984. The complete and utter destruction of a human being in Winston Smith was and always will be a tragedy beyond measure, but it’s no accident that Orwell chose to have his doomed protagonist work at the Ministry of Truth. If you don’t know the novel, the protagonist’s job is to rewrite history so that the leader’s positions and pronouncements are always correct. In this job, he has to simultaneously know that he is lying and also accept the new truth he himself has created. In Orwell’s created language, Newspeak, this is called doublethink: the ability to hold two contradictory versions of the truth simultaneously and apply whichever one is necessary for any given situation. O’Brien saying that the stars are points of light a few miles away and which can be blotted out if desired but that they are also millions of miles away if needed for nautical navigation is a case in point. As badly as Winston is treated in the novel, and as much as he is wholly destroyed as a person, the very concept of objective reality is another casualty of the Party. It’s not just that they need you to believe in them, or just replace your beliefs with theirs–they need you to be untethered to the concept itself. (The Party does something similar to the emotion of love between two people, and I can’t help but think those are connected, but let’s not explore that right now).
So, anyway. I think Trump is trying once again not just to get his followers to believe him and not believe those who speak out against him–he’s setting up an attack on the notion that anyone can know anything at all. That’s how I think he plans to get out of this Epstein thing.
I’m curious to see if it works this time like it has so many times in the past. I have a sinking feeling that it will–my name, after all, is O’Brien.
Be seeing you!
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