With Fear or Favor

We often think of the strength that comes with great numbers of people acting together as one, but there are forces working against that.

Individual journalists were singled out this week by Trump. (OK, there are journalists and"journalists".)

Trump singled out Hannity and friend Pirro for favor, inviting them to join him up onstage at his rally.

And CNNs Jim Acosta was singled out for fear, his White House press credentials revoked.

source:people.com

source:cnn

The details of the treatment of Acosta do not really matter. The Trump White House has been building up to this making CNN and Acosta in particular his punching bag. CNN is the greater threat to Trump, not MSNBC. Trump supporters ignore MSNBC as biased, but CNN has a history of inviting Trump apologists, not just Republicans and conservatives, as talking heads to position themselves as "fair and balanced". That makes CNN harder to ignore.

This is all about the authoritarian demonstration of his power. See, I can revoke your press pass and your livelihood is gone. There is nothing you can do about it. I can lie about my reason for doing this, everyone knows I am lying, and there is still nothing you can do about it. I revoked Brennan's security clearance - a clear demonstration of power, and there was nothing any of you could do about it. In fact, I can grant my son-in-law, Jared Kushner a security clearance, and there is still nothing you can do about that either.  I can fire Comey and any other witnesses Mueller may find to my antics -  McCabe, Strzok. In McCabe's case, firing him just before eligibility for full pension was the point - the intimidation factor matters. And humiliation.  Picture Rex Tillerson getting the news of his firing on the toilet.

Under the authoritarian mentality, I define reality. So each of these victims to my ritual humiliation is made to look weak and, therefore, something of a loser,and therefore someone who is wrong, morally weak and morally wrong. That becomes the frame in which I define truth. The ritual humiliation is important, the signaling ahead of time - Sessions has been dangled for months - that even when you know the hit is coming, there is nothing anyone can do about it.

The authoritarian relies on fear --- and dispersal of the opposition into individual atoms. No one wants to be singled out for the hit and will think twice before taking action against the authoritarian. That's the point.

Greg Sargent explains how this authoritarianism works.

1) Sarah Sanders is flagrantly lying about what happened with @acosta, to justify punishing a reporter for holding Trump accountable.

People seem baffled.

How could the White House lie about something that's on video, where everyone can see what really happened?

*Thread*

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) November 8, 2018