Thursday, October 20, 2016

Implausible Deniability

Donald T. has a long litany of statements that he has denied making, or he or his team have denied that the statements mean what they literally mean. At some point, the denials are simply not credible and we must conclude we are witnessing pure gamesmanship. But what is the game?
DT's so-called "birther lie" was not a lie at all. As a conspiracy theory, the birther movement was a quest for shelter from the storm of "those people" taking over the U.S. government- hence the immediate reaction of a vocal minority to "take our country back" following the election of Obama in 2008. DT did not reject the "birther" claim until it had served its purpose to delegitimize the presidency throughout virtually all of Obams's administration.
So now we have the statement that he will not accept the results of the election, which is being morphed by spokespeople into all kinds of distortions - what about Al Gore? Hmmm. Why does every request for clarification from these people involve invocation of comparisons with Democrats, regardless of applicability? Notice that DT never said "I think it is going to be so close, like Bush/Gore in 2000, that we may not know the results that night."
If we take DT's incredibly narcissistic personality at face value, where the U.S. is not a great nation with a proud democratic history, but instead his playground, we see that DT has nothing to gain from conceding defeat in an election. From his purely selfish standpoint, refusing to concede only makes life more difficult for his opponent-always a good thing. For him, the advantage is being able to suggest throughout the next four years "People are saying I am the real President and the election was stolen from me." Of course, that is the mild form of "It's All About Me". He will likely be demanding that the president be locked up, because that is what he does.

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