Author: hearseeno

Anonymous wrote:
If you are puzzled by the bizarre “press conference” put on by the White House press secretary this evening (angrily claiming that Trump’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:

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 “negging,” the odious pick-up practice of a particular kind of horrible person (e.g., Donald Trump).

2. Increasing the separation between Trump’s base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong—that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong—they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here—likely to pay off—is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as “fake news” (because otherwise they’d be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)

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 “clearly the White House is lying,” a third will say “if Trump says it, it must be true,” and the remaining third will say “gosh, I guess this is unknowable.” The idea isn’t to convince these people of untrue things, it’s to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.

This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump’s White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as this, just imagine what else they’ll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. It’s gonna get real bad.

http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/2017/01/trumps-fact-free-world-and-it-matters.html

Though that’s not the original source.  It was quoted by Michael-in-Norfolk, stating “An activist friend shared some thoughts on Facebook that seem to describe the coming disinformation campaign:”

~*~

And here we see how Trump will achieve that aim.  

From:  With False Claims, Trump Attacks Media on Turnout and Intelligence Rift NYT 1/21/17 By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and MATTHEW ROSENBERG

Commentary about the size of his inauguration crowd made Mr. Trump increasingly angry on Friday, according to several people familiar with his thinking.

On Saturday, Mr. Trump told his advisers that he wanted to push back hard on “dishonest media” coverage — mostly referring to a Twitter post from a New York Times reporter showing side-by-side frames of Mr. Trump’s crowd and Mr. Obama’s in 2009. But most of Mr. Trump’s advisers urged him to focus on the responsibilities of his office during his first full day as president.

and later in the article

But most of his [Trump’s] remarks [at his appearance at the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va on 1/21/17] were devoted to attacking the news media. And Mr. Spicer picked up the theme later in the day in the White House briefing room. But his appearance, according to the people familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking, went too far, in the president’s opinion.

This is how the teflon works.  Trump goes off in private, activates his flying monkeys by riling them up and making them defensive on his behalf, releases them to promulgate his will, and then subsequently disavows their actions.  By this process, his anger and narcissistic injury is expressed, but he remains untouched by the fallout.  He can appear cool, unaffected, and magnanimous when dealing with both his flying monkeys (they were just suffering from “too much love” for him) and his detractors, gas lighting them in the process (I really didn’t mean/say/intend that).  

Somehow during all the scandals and horrors arising from the Bush-era employment of Blackwater mercenaries, I missed the disturbing fact that Blackwater founder Erik Prince is Betsey DeVos’ brother. Prince is horrifying. If you don’t remember Blackwater, they were the model for the worst villains on the subversive Jericho. These days, they’ve been twice rebranded — first as “Xe,” then as “Academi” — in an attempt to distance themselves from the disgrace and liability stemming from their My Lai-ish massacre in Baghdad in 2007.

The jackboots-for-hire mogul behind all of that paramilitary profiteering is part of the DeVos clan — the multilevel marketing empire that provides generous, but highly conditional, funding for many mainstream white evangelical institutions. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon is fun. Two degrees of Erik Prince is the stuff of a dystopian nightmare.

source @ slacktivist
(via mswyrr)

gameraboy:

A view behind the science console of the USS Enterprise set

Original caption from Starlog #16 (1978):

This rear detail of one of the Star Trek sets is not only detailed, complicated and exact, but scrapped as well! Strangely enough, this section of the console was built for the never-produced second TV series. When plans were finalized for the fifteen-million-dollar movie, Gene Roddenberry and crew started from scratch to produce sets their legion of fans could only imagine.

Trump Orders All Bureaus To Suspend Tweeting After Park Service Shares Images Of Inauguration Crowd

tpfnews:

The Washington Post reports:

The Interior Department was ordered Friday to shut down its official Twitter accounts — indefinitely — after the National Park Service shared two unsympathetic tweets during President Trump’s inauguration.

The first noted the new president’s relatively small inaugural crowd compared to the number of people former president Barack Obama drew to the National Mall when he was sworn into office in 2009. The second tweet noted several omissions of policy areas on the new White House website. A Park Service employee retweeted both missives on Friday.

“All bureaus and the department have been directed by incoming administration to shut down Twitter platforms immediately until further notice,” said an email circulated to Park Service employees Friday afternoon. The email, obtained by The Post, described the stand-down as an “urgent directive” and said social media managers must shut down the accounts “until further directed.”

Trump Orders All Bureaus To Suspend Tweeting After Park Service Shares Images Of Inauguration Crowd

White House press secretary attacks media for accurately reporting inauguration crowds from CNN

To quote:

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer said, contradicting all available data.

Aerial photos have indicated that former president Barack Obama’s first inauguration attracted a much larger crowd. Nielsen ratings show that Obama also had a bigger television audience.

Spicer said, without any evidence, that some photos were “intentionally framed” to downplay Trump’s crowd.

He also expressed objections to specific Twitter posts from journalists. And he said, “we’re going to hold the press accountable,” partly by reaching the public through social networking sites.

for reference.  From Vox.

credit to: Javier Zarracina/Vox   and                                      Jewel Samad / AP                                                                   

How the town of Whitefish defeated its neo-Nazi trolls — and became a national model of resistance

scholvin:

As pleasing as it is to see Richard Spencer get hit in the face over and over and over on my dash tonight, he actually suffered a far more humiliating and important defeat earlier this week. 

Remember how he called for an armed march against the tiny Jewish community in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana for last Monday? Yeah. About that:

The rabbi’s voice began to break. For several seconds, the park was silent, save for the sound of Roston sniffling. “You let us know that we are not alone,” she finally said. “You let us know that our community, that our amazing magnificent town of Whitefish, is not only protected by great, divinely formed mountains of earth — this town is protected by a wall of humanity that refuses to be quiet or sit still in the face of bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia or anti-Semitism.”

TL;DR – the entire town rallied around their neighbors. They got unequivocal, strong, bipartisan support from state officials. Reinforcements arrived from around the country. And the nazis fucking bailed. They never even showed up.

That article needs editing, but it’s worth a scan for the lessons in it. The one I’m holding onto is that we can never give these clowns power they don’t actually have, especially the nameless online assbags. We can’t cede an inch. If we care about each other, and just show up, they will lose every. fucking. time. 

How the town of Whitefish defeated its neo-Nazi trolls — and became a national model of resistance