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Keep the following in mind as you continue reading:
A Sociopath: A sociopath is typically defined as someone who lies incessantly to get their way and does so with little concern for others. A sociopath is often goal-oriented (i.e., lying is focused—it is done to get one’s way). Sociopaths have little regard or respect for the rights and feelings of others. Sociopaths are often charming and charismatic, but they use their talented social skills in manipulative and self-centered ways (see lovefraud, for more on sociopaths).
Compulsive Liar: A compulsive liar is defined as someone who lies out of habit. Lying is their normal and reflexive way of responding to questions. Compulsive liars bend the truth about everything, large and small. For a compulsive liar, telling the truth is very awkward and uncomfortable while lying feels right. Compulsive lying is usually thought to develop in early childhood, due to being placed in an environment where lying was necessary. For the most part, compulsive liars are not overly manipulative and cunning (unlike sociopaths), rather they simply lie out of habit—an automatic response which is hard to break and one that takes its toll on a relationship (see how to cope with a compulsive liar).
Which to whit:
President Donald Trump falsely claimed in a Wednesday night interview that two people were shot in Chicago during former President Obama’s farewell address in the city, The Chicago Tribune reported.
ABC News’ David Muir asked Trump about Chicago in one exchange from the interview, which the Tribune noted was not aired on television Wednesday but which appears in the interview’s full transcript. The President has long panned what he has called “carnage” in American cities, Chicago foremost among them.
“Well, so far they have been unable” to curb the city’s murder rate, Trump said, according to the transcript.
“It’s been going on for years. And I wasn't President," he continued. "So, look, when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can't have that.”
But that's simply not true. The Tribune confirmed with the Chicago Police Department that no shootings occurred during Obama’s speech.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-falsely-claims-2-shot-dead-chicago-obama-farewell
Let's just say for the sake of argument that all politicians lie. Some more than others. Agreed?
What Drumpf is doing though, is lying on a level and scale never before seen in the annals of American politics. The man is a virtual Gatling Gun of lies - and it does not matter how insignificant the subject matter is that he is lying about on any given day - it could be anything - he just makes shit up and throws it out there in the arena of public discourse. Quite often Drumpf will deny it when confronted the day after he spews the lie, and then the following day will double down and repeat it yet again (that's the sociopath part).
And The Gadfly specifically emphasizes "
American" politics, because the world actually has seen Drumpf level of lying throughout the course of history - most notably that of Adolph Hitler and his crack team of masterful propagandists in pre-WW2 Germany whereby the Nazis actually convinced their people that the cause of all their economic woe and misery wasn't their country's antagonistic role in WW1, but was actually because of the Jews, the liberals, the intellectuals, the gays and the minorities (sound familiar) who were diluting and polluting their purebred, wholesome, Aryan way of life and acting as their economic oppressors.
And what is sad and scary is that Drumpf's hard core followers are of the same unthinking mindset as were Hitler's followers.
Dear Leader Drumpf says
he saw "thousands" of American-Muslims dancing and celebrating in the streets in New Jersey on 9/11, although no one else saw it, - yet his followers believe him.
Dear Leader Drumpf says, without a shred of proof, that as many as
5 million illegal aliens cast votes for Hillary Clinton, thus denying Dear Leader a popular vote mandate - his followers believe it.
Dear Leader Drumpf says he saw at least a million and a half people at his inauguration and that it was the largest ever in the history of inaugurations, all over the world including Obama's, despite
photographic evidence clearly disproving the claim - his followers believe it.
Dear Leader Drumpf says he's going to
build a 2,000 mile long, impenetrable wall along the U.S./Mexico border, over mountains, through rivers and lakes and canyons and the U.S.
taxpayers will not have to pay a dime for it because Mexicans will pay for it - his followers believe it.
Dear Leader Drumpf says he is going to
provide every American with quality, low cost health insurance - even though to date he has not presented one single line of detail on such a plan - his followers believe it.
Dear Leader Drumpf told his followers that if elected he would
release his tax returns - his followers believed it.
That is just a sparse sampling of some of Drumpf's more prominently blatant lies. And this is not anything new for Drumpf by the way. Anyone who has followed Donald Drumpf's licentious career knows what a sleazy, manipulative con artist he is and always has been. The Gadfly's larger point here is really about his rapturous disciples who uncritically accept his word as the gospel truth and his intentions as being in good faith even when directly confronted to their faces with all of the available evidence that irrevocably invalidates the man's lies and deceit. They possess the same cultish mindset of the kind of people who enabled an Adolph Hitler and his minions to come to power and nearly destroy the world some 70 or so years ago.
Drumpf's spokespeople say they are just presenting
"alternative facts" and that there are
"no such things as facts anymore" -- and horrifyingly, that appears to be a totally acceptable explanation to the Drumpf bootlickers.
That kind of mindless, soulless, programmed conviction does not bode well for a healthy, inclusive democracy and in fact is the key ingredient in the recipe for spectacularly failed societies -- just ask any 90 year old German citizen about how that blind fealty to a charismatic, brash, uber-patriotic nationalist worked out for them 70 years ago.
This is the reality that we are faced with as a nation right now dear readers. And the sooner that the remaining mature, clear thinking adults all decide to set aside petty ideological, philosophical and political differences, and unite to collectively address the crisis of this extremist danger in our midst, the sooner we as a nation will begin the process of rectifying a terrible mistake and save America from a fate not so very different from the one which befell 1940's Germany.
Drumpf, in his autobiography wrote this:
"The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion."
~~~Donald Trump in "The Art of The Deal"
Tell The Gadfly how that philosphy differs in any way from this:
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
"The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it."
~~~Joseph Goebbels - Nazi Minister of Propaganda
Resist.
----TFG
