Snake Oil & Fury

T here’s no argument amongst Trump’s enemies, his grovelling enablers, and even among millions of his supporters, that Trump is a professional liar, and that“liar”  defines almost the entirety of Trump’s persona. It is not possible to listen to Trump speak or tweet and not be more or less certain that what he says is not the truth. Because he said it. Unless you are the dregs of the Trump base and need to believe him. Others of his base will be well aware of the lies but they are vested in their fantasy outcome. We see this in the desperate illogic of their rebuttals of Trumps dishonesty and incompetence, on twitter and elsewhere.

Trump lies for preference. He will not tell the truth if he can manufacture a useful falsehood. He doesn’t control the truth but he does have control of the lies he tells which he can disown and deny at will. He is also a professional gaslighter and lying, and the confusion of whether he is lying or telling the truth is central to his technique.  

This is not unique to Trump. And, strangely enough, he isn’t very good at it. The Jesuits were — and are — masters of the noble lie. 

 Jesuitical casuistry can be described as “destroying by distinctions and exceptions, all morality, and effacing the essential difference between right and wrong”. 

The story goes that in the Middle Ages catholic priests were barred from entering England.
So when Jesuit priests arrived from the Continent and were asked “Are you a priest,” they would reply, “No.”
Of course to tell a lie was a sin. But they had an excellent work-around, the casuistic argument called “Mental Reservation”, or “mental equivocation”, the lie of necessity.
So when they said they were not a priest, they were thinking, “the questioner might have a particular priest in mind, but I am not that particular priest, so I am not “a” priest he is thinking of.”
Or he might think, “I am not a priest of Zeus,” so when he says “No,” he is, with mental reservation, telling a kind of convenient truth.
But when an argument comes down to the definition of the word “a”  then it’s really just blatant dishonesty.

This casuistry has of course migrated from the church throughout the upper echelons of power and is now the benchmark and basic tool in law, corporations, government bureaucracies, politics at every level (note that habitual liar Tony Abbott was trained by Jesuits) and of course in advertising and public relations.

Basically we’re being lied to for most of every day by everyone who has any sort of use for us and access to us.

And we know it. And we don’t really trust anyone who’s trying to ‘sell’ us something of any kind.

At least most of us don’t really trust them. But some do, and they’re the people who have always fallen for the flimflammers, the con-artists, the snake-oil salesmen, swindlers, grifters – in other words, people like Trump, whose  shills are his children, his donors and almost every Congressional Republican.

That people with brains really can’t see, at least after the first time or second time, how they’re being fooled is, as Fanny D. Bergen wrote in 1888, incredible.

” I t seems almost incredible, whatever their origin, that remedies of so offensive a character as many of those above given can still retain a place . . . but there seems to be in the uneducated human mind a sort of reverence for or faith in that which is in itself disagreeable or repulsive. This idea apparently rules instead of rational judgment

You can certainly say that Trump meets the requirements for both ‘disagreeable’ and ‘repulsive’.

The original Snake Oil salesman was Clark Stanley. He was in his way a showman. Among his tricks was a grotesque and highly dramatic performance. With real, live rattlesnakes.

” C lark Stanley reached into a sack, plucked out a snake, slit it open and plunged it into boiling water. When the fat rose to the top, he skimmed it off and used it on the spot to create ‘Stanley’s Snake Oil,’ a liniment that was immediately snapped up by the throng that had gathered to watch the spectacle. Little wonder. After all, Stanley had proclaimed that the liniment would cure rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lumbago, sore throat, frostbite and even toothache.
Dr. Joe Schwarcz in: Science, Sense & Nonsense

You can see – and unhappily smell – the surely not coincidental similarities in structure and style. So, again, a fairly clear progenitor and influencer for Trump.  

As recently as 24 years ago, Congressman Martin R. Hoke said in a speech: 

“M r. Speaker, there is an old trick to hawking snake oil. First raise the fear. Then sell to it. That is exactly what [they] are trying to do with their latest advertising campaign of fear and blatant disinformation.

 This also matches Trump but, as you know only too well, it is now standard throughout politics and has been at least since Joseph Goebbels.  

Trump is a con-man. There was a saying amongst con men: “There’s a mark born every minute”. Suckers are everywhere and Trump has learnt – probably to his surprise – that the suckers he cons amount to almost 50% of Americans. 

Trump is a professional liar and has been since he was bounced off his father’s knee, since the first time his father promised to catch him but lied and let him crash to the floor.

He learnt to trust no-one.

He learnt that love was a hoax (and that he could use that against others and to control others).

And he learnt to steal from anyone anything that he wanted. 

He practised his frauds and polished his scamming skills on his own family. 

Trump is clearly psychologically impaired and emotionally dead, except towards himself.

All of this is obvious. 

Here is the “grandiosity” section of the Diagnostic Interview for Narcissism (DIN): 

• The person exaggerates talents, capacity, and achievements in an unrealistic way.
• The person believes their invulnerability or do not recognize their limitations.
• The person has grandiose fantasies.
• The person believes that they do not need other people.
• The person overexamines and downgrades other people, projects, statements, or dreams in an unrealistic manner.
• The person regards themselves as unique or special when compared to other people.
• The person regards themselves as generally superior to other people.
• The person behaves self-centeredly and/or self-referentially.
• The person behaves in a boastful or pretentious way.

This fits like a glove at every single point. It’s just one of several diagnoses that Trump fits.

So Can Trump Win?

Can he win the popular vote? Or the Electoral College vote, as he did last time?

Biden seems to be going well but, as so many of us are thinking, we thought Clinton had it in the bag four years ago too. Is there going to be another disastrous surprise?

Comparing the polling for 2016 and 2020, it’s clear there’s no room for complacency. Clinton was consistently ahead of Trump and had the two major states, Pennsylvania and Florida, in her grasp, as Biden does now. But . . .  below are the comparative projections for 2016 and 2020 produced by fivethirtyeight.com

Clinton’s road was bumpy and volatile while Biden’s has been more or less straight and stable.    

Biden’s chance of winning (81%) is 10% higher than Clinton’s was (71%). 

Biden is ahead in the same two important swing states – Florida and Pennsylvania – that Clinton was forecast to win but lost. So this might be cause for concern. However, Biden is one or two percent ahead of Clinton’s polling in Pennsylvania that Trump won by less than 1%. In Florida Clinton was ahead by about 2% while Biden is 4.3% ahead. Trump won Florida by 1.2%. So it’s Biden’s to lose.     

The simulations for Biden are slightly better than Clinton’s were but there’s not a lot in it.  

Unfortunately . . .

there is another predictive model, Helmut Norpoth’s Primary Model. This is based on the Primary races in the Spring. Only twice has it been wrong and then it was very close. What it measures basically is the winning margin in the primaries of the party’s winning candidate. This reflects the enthusiasm of people to get out and vote. That’s fair enough because the outcome is not based on polling around who people would prefer to win but how many people actually vote for their candidate.

In the case of this election the Primary Model, published on 2 March, 2020 predicted that the probability of Trump winning was 91%.

That’s frankly upsetting and the only antidote is for Democrats to get out and vote in huge numbers, larger than what’s predicted in the primaries.

Three things about this Primary Model prediction:

1.  If the Norpoth Primary Model is valid and conclusive then there would be no need to bother about an actual election. They could go directly from the primaries to the inauguration. It would save billions of dollars. Also what it suggests is that universal suffrage is pointless and that most voters are powerless except for the ones who vote in the primaries.

2.  When the Norpoth prediction was published only four of the 57 primaries had been completed:  Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Biden only won two, but he eventually won 47 overall, ultimately by very strong margins;

3.  This election year is, as people keep saying, “unprecedented”. The Primary Model’s prediction was published on 2 March when the pandemic that has so shaken and globally embarrassed the United States was hardly getting started and the people were being promised that everything was under control and it would quickly, magically disappear.

On 2 March there were just 16 cases and only 3 deaths. Today (10/10/20) there has been a world-beating total of 7,945,505 cases and 219,282 deaths. And rising.

On 2 March the unemployment rate was under 4%; within days it had spiked to over 14% and it remains at about 8%. Many millions are out of work. In mid-September, 8.3 million reported being behind on rent and 3.8 million reported that they were likely to be evicted.

Breonna Taylor was shot six times by the police on 13 March. George Floyd was killed by police on 25 May and the Black Lives Matter movement activated millions of protesters in the US and around the world.

Groups of influential, life-long, baked-on, career Republicans, such as the Lincoln Project and MeidasTouch, infuriated and disgusted by Trump’s dishonesty, his mismanagement of the pandemic (and everything else), and his increasingly corrupt enablers, have turned their considerable and frankly ruthless political skills and experience against him in the Presidential campaign.

The political landscape, and the political issues, were utterly disrupted after the Norpoth prediction was released. So it seems unlikely that data on the number of people who were voting for a candidate—or, importantly, who didn’t bother to vote—in the primaries before 2 March would have been able to give a realistic indication of voting intentions and political engagement eight months later. Americans are now voting in a very different world and there is much , much more at stake.

Again, there is no room whatever for complacency.

If Norpoth is right we should be preparing for an influx of Americans to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Europe (including, for the moment, if we can, Britain).

As Trump would say, “We’ll see how it turns out.”

The October Surprise

Trump gave us an early October Surprise which tanked in the worst way, by dropping three percentage points . Still, he wasn’t letting the facts (such as he was being treated for CoVid19) stand in the way of a performance opportunity, and so he decided to pretend to be the President and stage a motorcade, waving to his adoring minions – who are few in the District of Columbia which is the bluest place in the USA. The fact this was potentially a death drive for those also in the car with him is of no consequence to someone who believes it’s the least they can do to sacrifice their lives for someone so much more important than them. Or frankly anyone.

There was also an earlier alleged attempted September Surprise. Trump was almost certainly infected with the coronavirus when he debated Joe Biden on 29 September, and knew he was infected. So the surprise may have been his attempted assassination by virus of his adversary. What’s the evidence? His campaign and the White House both refuse to confirm or deny his coronavirus status on that day or earlier. His doctors lie. They also refuse to confirm or deny.

The Base
and the unwillingness to understand

The greatest failure of the Clinton campaign and possibly the most crucial lesson unlearnt by the Biden campaign is why Trump succeeded against all odds in the 2016 election.

Everyone knows Trump is a con-man and a pathological liar, a sexual predator, a racist and intellectually stupid (but natively and intuitively brilliant at gaslighting people, as sociopaths are).

But Trump got how badly the people were hurting in blue collar, economically declining areas; how uncomfortable, or even afraid, they were of societal changes and cultural forces that were threatening the world they knew and understood and the values that mattered to them. He used this to generate his base by promising what he wouldn’t and couldn’t deliver (because he deeply lacks the intellect required).

His base believed him because they needed to. It was their only hope. They still do and they think it still is.

The last thing a Presidential candidate should call people who are hurting, who are afraid, who are confused, who are afraid of losing what dignity they have left, the last thing is to call them “deplorables”. When Clinton did that she showed lack of compassion, lack of understanding, lack of interest in those people and it was a massive own goal, the results of which still haunt the Democrats.

The one thing Biden should have done, has not specifically done, and which, if he doesn’t do it could lose him the election, is to directly address those people who are hurting and say he gets it, gets their anger, pain and upset, and tell them how he is going to help them.

The Gentility
& the Lincoln Project

The problem with the Democrats is that they are so polite. You wouldn’t be rude, not even to an enemy.

A senior MI6 bureaucrat explained to a journalist that he was always polite to representatives of hostile nations. “Yes, but when they’ve done something really bad, how do you show them you’re angry?” “We don’t offer them a cup of tea.”

Or as Veronica Roth wrote: “Politeness is deception in pretty packaging.” Although it has been designed to enable social intercourse without violence, it actually isn’t nice at all. It’s intentional inauthenticity. And it has a more than a tinge of superiority and entitlement. The violence is hidden but still there.

The Democrats need to hide less behind social sophistication and start speaking more authentically.

That is what the Lincoln Project and MeidasTouch do, because they’re not Democrats but Republicans. They know how toxic Trump is and how to talk to Republicans and swing voters. They are ruthless and that’s a lesson the Democrats could learn from, because the stakes are so high.

Losing politely is not an option.

The Anger

Sir Roger is furious with Trump, not for the reasons you might imagine but because when Trump (reportedly) contracted COVID-19 Sir Roger in his darkest heart for a moment hoped Trump would die and save the US from any more of his horrors. This is not the sort of person Sir Roger believes himself to be or ever wants to be and Sir Roger is angry that Trump moved him to this feeling if only for a nanosecond. Sir Roger now feels that justice would be better served if Trump survived the virus, lost the election, and was subsequently indicted and found guilty of all of the corruption that he has progressed, during his term in office and before. And so he would pay for the damage he has done to the US and its people. But Sir Roger stops well short of politely wishing him well (like a Democrat).

The Shame & the Laughing Stock

Donald Trump for four years has shamed his country. Americans are aware, surely, of how poorly he has ‘led’ the country, how he has failed it, how it has fallen in the estimation of people from almost every other country except, of course those other countries who find Trump a Useful Idiot; countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia. People in the rest of the world feel genuinely sorry for Americans who have to suffer the political and cultural fiasco that Trump has visited on them.

At the same time they are laughing their heads off at the incompetence and obvious con artistry of Trump and at the people who are stupid enough to believe he is their saviour and that he has been doing a valuable job.

The Reality Mafia Show

One of the most interesting things about the criminal ‘Presidency’ has been, despite all the lies and obfuscations, the fact that the interminable, torrential, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling lies have provided an extraordinary, absolutely transparent view, through the White House Reality Show of how the Mafia operates. Starring The Don, a bankruptcy-prone con-man. It’s thrill-a-minute, complete with shadowy international accomplices, thugs, threats, bribes, blackmail, corrupt officials, and mass-murder. And all there, laid luminously bare.

How is any of this about Australian Values?

Global stability

Compassion

Decency

Climate Change/ Global Warming

The future of the planet and life on Earth including the lives of our children and their children and theirs etc. etc. etc.

Freedom

Democracy.

And the more time Trump has, the more permission he gives to others like the Australian Right to become more and more authoritarian.

And so much more.

Never forget what Trump’s main advisor in the 2016 campaign, Steve Bannon, said:

“I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment. . . Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power.”

If only there were a god to rid us of this turbulent prick, Trump.

The Real Showman 

” But however mysterious is nature, however ignorant the doctor, however imperfect the present state of physical science, the patronage and the success of quacks and quackeries are infinitely more wonderful than those of honest and laborious men of science and their careful experiments.

Phineas Taylor (PT) Barnum, The Humbugs of the World (1865)