(no subject)

[proximoception]

Speaking of terms of art, is there a special one for deliberate projection in the political sphere? That "I know you are but what am I" thing that Fox News always does? Trump's doing it now by painting Clinton as unhinged - and of course was doing it before when calling her crooked. I suppose the point is to suggest either equivalent guilt (they're all the same anyway) or that suggesting such things is just what political campaigns do regardless of the facts. And for true believers it creates the same "how dare they" feeling that I have, the sense that Big Lie-level projection is occurring, perhaps aided by how we all remember the unfairness of the I'm Rubber technique from childhood.

So it performs different work on the 3 groups:

1. Supporters: fury that the other side had, to their minds, used the very tactic you're using.

2. Undecided: confusion about who's guilty of what, leading to condemning both parties or neither.

3. Opponents' supporters: fury that you're using this tactic.

Doesn't tend to turn a negative story into a positive, but it can wipe the slate clean again. It can only really work when your base is disaffected from mainstream, fact-based media, your opponent's sufficiently high-info that you have no shot at them, and the undecided don't delve much into details. I.e. only for the present conservative movement, but for them it can work over and over and over. And is a big part of how big lies have gradually become self-sabotagingly huge ones.

Comments

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I hope they're self-sabotaging. I think Trump keeps changing the reference point, so that everything he does is a new normal. He can't possibly be outrageous anymore, so that he can be as outrageous as he wants here on in.

Freud calls these "tu quoque" moments -- you are too!

Kind of the converse of Karl Rove's playbook: always attack someone for lacking their very strongest qualities.

Which is related to what Stephen Potter in Lifesmanship calls "Newstatesmaning":

In Newstatesmaning the critic must always be on top of, or better than, the person criticised. Sometimes the critic will be of feeble and mean intelligence. The subject of his criticism may be a man of genius. Yet he must get on top. How? the layman asks.

By the old process - of going one better... Skim some review dealing with the author involved, find the quality for which this author was most famous, and then blame him for not having enough of it.

[E.g.]: “the one thing that was lacking, of course, from D. H. Lawrence’s novels, was the consciousness of sexual relationship, the male and female element in life.”

[Or:] Talk about the almost open sadism of Charles Lamb, or about Lytton Strachey as a master of baroque. “The deep superficiality of Catullus.”

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I guess what all of those share is that they jar our sense of the playing field more than they jar any individual players. The Big Lie is big because it denies the obvious, the normal. We're not prepared to defend what we could never imagine would be attacked. Which brings us back to the narcissist/sociopath problem. Trump's the former, Rove et al. are (functionally, anyway) the latter, so Trump's Big Lies are a lot more spontaneous and frequent. Enough so that they totally suck as Big Lies for any but the most loyal or dim. Presumably that's what makes him seem honest: his dishonesty, self-interest, ignorance etc. are palpable. He lies like a child, the others like adult and professional liars. He doesn't know how to lie like they do, so you know what you're getting. Or rather will know just what infantile motivations will get you whatever crazy shit you do get. Friendships with narcissists are not entirely dissimilar to S&M, or to the phenomenon of African Americans staying in the south. You'll reliably get hurt but just how will also be reliable. Clinton is not a sociopath but knows she has to think like one to survive politically. Often she lies to tell the truth (e.g. the lie that Comey praised her for truth-telling communicates the truth that his words indicated she was not up to any mischief that mattered), but what a lot of people see is only that she lies and they can't be sure why. With Trump you never need to guess.