{"id":45486,"date":"2017-01-24T13:39:16","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T18:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/?p=45486"},"modified":"2017-01-24T13:40:37","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T18:40:37","slug":"be-aware-whats-going-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/be-aware-whats-going-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Be aware what&#8217;s going on"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I know this is controversial, ignore if it&#8217;s not for you. My feeling is it&#8217;s obvious this is happening &#8211;&gt; being told lies despite evidence of truth, setting a precedent for banning free speech (no Q &amp; A) and calling truth tellers &#8220;fake&#8221; news. It&#8217;s also obvious he&#8217;s President until he&#8217;s not and he can do what he wants, until he can&#8217;t. More qualified ones than I are actively working on that. WHAT I CAN DO do is live my life with integrity and don&#8217;t let my happiness depend on what he says or doesn&#8217;t say and do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">From\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Cross-Cultural-Communications-131814456497\/?fref=nf&amp;pnref=story\">Cross-Cultural Communications<\/a>,\u00a0<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Analysis purportedly from a former White House staffer:\u00a0&#8220;If you are puzzled by the bizarre &#8220;press conference&#8221; put on by the White House press secretary this evening (angrily claiming that Trump&#8217;s inauguration had the largest audience in history, accusing them of faking photos and lying about attendance), let me help explain it. This spectacle served three purposes: \u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference. This is the PR equivalent of &#8220;negging,&#8221; the odious pick-up practice of a particular kind of horrible man (e.g., Donald Trump).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;2. Increasing the separation between Trump&#8217;s base (1\/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2\/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong\u2014that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong\u2014they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here\u2014likely to pay off\u2014is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as &#8220;fake news&#8221; (because otherwise they&#8217;d be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say &#8220;clearly the White House is lying,&#8221; a third will say &#8220;if Trump says it, it must be true,&#8221; and the remaining third will say &#8220;gosh, I guess this is unknowable.&#8221; The idea isn&#8217;t to convince these people of untrue things, it&#8217;s to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump&#8217;s White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as this, just imagine what else they&#8217;ll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. It&#8217;s gonna get real bad.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"s-share-buttons\" class=\"horizontal-w-c-circular s-share-w-c\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/be-aware-whats-going-on\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Share to Facebook\" class=\"s3-facebook hint--top\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=Be aware what&#8217;s going on&url=https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/be-aware-whats-going-on\/\" target=\"_blank\"  title=\"Share to Twitter\" class=\"s3-twitter hint--top\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/share?url=https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/be-aware-whats-going-on\/\" target=\"_blank\"  title=\"Share to Google Plus\" class=\"s3-google-plus hint--top\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/be-aware-whats-going-on\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Share to LinkedIn\" class=\"s3-linkedin hint--top\"><\/a><div class=\"pinit-btn-div\"><a href=\"\/\/www.pinterest.com\/pin\/create\/button\/\" data-pin-do=\"buttonBookmark\"  data-pin-color=\"red\" title=\"Share to Pinterest\" class=\"s3-pinterest hint--top\"><\/a><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\" async defer src=\"\/\/assets.pinterest.com\/js\/pinit.js\"><\/script><a href=\"mailto:?Subject=Be%20aware%20what&#8217;s%20going%20on&Body=Here%20is%20the%20link%20to%20the%20article:%20https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/be-aware-whats-going-on\/\" title=\"Email this article\" class=\"s3-email hint--top\"><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know this is controversial, ignore if it&#8217;s not for you. My feeling is it&#8217;s obvious this is happening &#8211;&gt; being told lies despite evidence of truth, setting a precedent for banning free speech (no Q &amp; A) and calling truth tellers &#8220;fake&#8221; news. It&#8217;s also obvious he&#8217;s President until he&#8217;s not and he can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45486"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45489,"href":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45486\/revisions\/45489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}