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Mar. 3rd, 2017 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionI think the Fundamental Attribution Error may cover both phenomena I was suggesting:
1. We have trouble remembering much of what Trump does wrong because it's way too wrong to easily imagine someone doing it all, leaving him off the hook for most of his actions.
2. Trump makes the wrong things he does seem like they might be merely stupid and vice versa, leaving it unclear where he was coming from even when it's clear he shouldn't have done them - a limbo preventing charges of stupidity and assholery from clearly sticking. (Bit like using committing one murder as your alibi for having not committed the other and vice versa.)
FAE is probably the main reason his supporters kept supporting him, too, at least in tandem with Fox et al.'s counternarrative that he was being smeared nonstop by mainstream faked news. If you're not as bad and dumb as him yourself, you'll find that extreme a degree of both simply implausible, rendering likelier-sounding many offered alternatives. So Trump promoted Foxism as much as Foxism promoted Trump, by making mainstream media-derived CW too surreal for those already doubting it to credit at all.
This is the narcissist problem in general. They don't just gaslight but ARE gaslights. They're walking Big Lies (and Big Stupidities) because we can't quite believe they exist - so assume someone more like us must in their place.
Julie's got another one at her present workplace - one gone in a week, thankfully - and even though she's so seasoned I see this even in her reactions to this person. She's offended - can't the narcissist see that behaviour X is ridiculous, unprincipled, hypocritical? Of course the narcissist can't see this / won't admit this / doesn't care, and Julie knows that. But she reacts to each new item with the same human disbelief, and in the tone you'd use to try to shepherd a human back into the bounds of the good and sane. That you'd use on someone who rarely does anything very wrong, so might be talked into closing whatever responsibility loophole they'd opened to bad effect.
1. We have trouble remembering much of what Trump does wrong because it's way too wrong to easily imagine someone doing it all, leaving him off the hook for most of his actions.
2. Trump makes the wrong things he does seem like they might be merely stupid and vice versa, leaving it unclear where he was coming from even when it's clear he shouldn't have done them - a limbo preventing charges of stupidity and assholery from clearly sticking. (Bit like using committing one murder as your alibi for having not committed the other and vice versa.)
FAE is probably the main reason his supporters kept supporting him, too, at least in tandem with Fox et al.'s counternarrative that he was being smeared nonstop by mainstream faked news. If you're not as bad and dumb as him yourself, you'll find that extreme a degree of both simply implausible, rendering likelier-sounding many offered alternatives. So Trump promoted Foxism as much as Foxism promoted Trump, by making mainstream media-derived CW too surreal for those already doubting it to credit at all.
This is the narcissist problem in general. They don't just gaslight but ARE gaslights. They're walking Big Lies (and Big Stupidities) because we can't quite believe they exist - so assume someone more like us must in their place.
Julie's got another one at her present workplace - one gone in a week, thankfully - and even though she's so seasoned I see this even in her reactions to this person. She's offended - can't the narcissist see that behaviour X is ridiculous, unprincipled, hypocritical? Of course the narcissist can't see this / won't admit this / doesn't care, and Julie knows that. But she reacts to each new item with the same human disbelief, and in the tone you'd use to try to shepherd a human back into the bounds of the good and sane. That you'd use on someone who rarely does anything very wrong, so might be talked into closing whatever responsibility loophole they'd opened to bad effect.
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Date: 2017-03-04 12:17 pm (UTC)This is spot on. My uncle is still posting Breitbart stories about Hillary. The counter narrative surprises me every day in how strong it is. Like you see the content of the NYT and the content of Breitbart and you're like yeah gimme Breitbart. I think America has a big personality disorder collectively. It's a fucked up sort of Schadenfreude against oneself.
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Date: 2017-03-05 05:25 am (UTC)