dagblog - Comments for "Thoughts on the political gaming of "the caravan""

danger danger warning warning

artappraiser — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 00:43:44 +0000

danger danger warning warning, some other things on his mind, kindler gentler things, actually extra scary:

Trump, in interview with @ABC7, says the one regret he has from his first two years in office is his tone.

"I would like to have a much softer tone. I feel, to a certain extent, I have no choice. But maybe I do. And maybe I could’ve been softer from that standpoint."
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) November 5, 2018

Yup (found just now on

artappraiser — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 23:39:40 +0000

In reply to In the end, Trump really

Yup (found just now on twitter because "liked" by Maggie Haberman):

Oh. https://t.co/hT0bgqFpXZ
— Julie Davis (@juliehdavis) November 5, 2018

In the end, Trump really

artappraiser — Sun, 04 Nov 2018 23:47:58 +0000

In reply to Thoughts on the political gaming of "the caravan"

In the end, Trump really doesn't really give a shit about any of this, deep down I suspect he doesn't give much of a shit whether GOP wins or not, in the end he's only doing all of it for the attention drawn to him. It just hit me now seeing this > Look at how he feels threatened by Oprah as a bigger celebrity who can draw a lot of attention when she helps a campaign:

Trump: “Oprah’s been down to Mar-a-Lago,” then claims he was on her last week of shows (he wasn’t), then insinuates they’re”trying to burn the tape.” (Which explains why the tape of the show he wasn’t on doesn’t exist!)
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 4, 2018

He'd probably actually like being impeached! It's really going to be no skin off his back to have Dems in Congress attacking him. It will just be more continued attention, the kind Oprah can't get.

The immigration thing as well as the tariff thing are just classics he uses that he knows the base likes. He can change that with whim if they no longer like it.

Makes me think that if Dems win Congress, constituents should make clear they want the priority to be attention to policy made by the adminstration over Trump follies, many of which are not real. He can troll and unnecessarily attract attention to himself while distracting from the minions while they execute GOP policies, that he can do

Very interesting that this

artappraiser — Sun, 04 Nov 2018 00:21:49 +0000

In reply to Thoughts on the political gaming of "the caravan"

Very interesting that this was not the original GOP plan:

How Republicans’ grand 2018 tax ambitions shriveled down to a Halloween press release https://t.co/U33krbHKRD
— Damian Paletta (@damianpaletta) November 2, 2018

a debunking agitprop story is

artappraiser — Sat, 03 Nov 2018 06:54:39 +0000

In reply to Thoughts on the political gaming of "the caravan"

a debunking agitprop story is currently # 1 most popular @ The Weekly Standard!

Fact Check: Does This Image Show a "Mexican Official being Dragged by the Caravan"?

Another day, another viral

artappraiser — Sat, 03 Nov 2018 06:48:07 +0000

In reply to Thoughts on the political gaming of "the caravan"

Another day, another viral caravan hoax. I reported this to FB earlier today, when it had <10,000 shares. (It's a photo of a border detention center published by @HoustonChron in 2014, nothing to do with caravan.) Still up, and now at 33,000 shares. pic.twitter.com/jo5oT45gPT
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) November 3, 2018

Edit to add, reminded of this from Kristof's column about manipulation of tribal impulses the other day:

For example, a Yale professor, John Bargh, describes in his book, “Before You Know It,” a study in which liberal college students were asked to imagine their own deaths in detail. Afterward, their views shifted rightward.

In another experiment, students were first cautioned about a flu going around, and then asked a series of questions. Simply reminding people about the flu led some to be more negative about immigration.

So, no surprise, Fox News is worrying aloud about the caravan bringing disease for want of vaccination. One Fox News “expert” warned that the diseases might include smallpox. (The fact that smallpox was eradicated worldwide four decades ago suggests his level of expertise.)

I checked childhood vaccination rates for Honduras, where the caravan began. They are 97 percent, compared to 92 to 95 percent in the United States, according to the World Health Organization. No wonder the United States Centers for Disease Control believes that“the children arriving at U.S. borders pose little risk of spreading infectious diseases.”

So Republican candidates conjure monsters to terrify us on a predictable election cycle. In 2010, it was “death panels” and the “Ground Zero mosque.” Four years ago, it was Ebola and ISIS terrorists sneaking in from Mexico. Two years ago it was men using transgender rights to invade women’s bathrooms. Today it’s the caravan.

he's going rogue, crazytown

artappraiser — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 02:19:16 +0000

In reply to Thoughts on the political gaming of "the caravan"

he's going rogue, crazytown in full force, no reins, all out call to the fan base, screw what GOP political ops think:

Yep. Rocks can be treated as firearms. https://t.co/DFBziY4VrN
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 1, 2018

Fact Check: A large share of the things President Trump just said on live television are not true.
— Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) November 1, 2018

Current NYTimes headline

artappraiser — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 01:27:30 +0000

In reply to Thinking outside the vox

Current NYTimes headline story suggests Trump has decided to go all out class war on this:

Trump’s Nationalism Is Breaking Point for Some Suburban Voters, Risking GOP Coalition

Educated, prosperous white people repelled by President Trump’s strident language on race and gender are turning away from the Republican Party.
Rather than seeking to coax these voters back, Mr. Trump appears to have all but written them off in the final days of the campaign.

1h ago

Yes ironic for a billionaire who brags how he's more elite than the elites, but that's a real tired old story already. All he cares about is who he thinks his fans are. After all, the wealthy suburbanites were never watching The Apprentice.

not what it first appears if

artappraiser — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 00:51:12 +0000

In reply to Thoughts on the political gaming of "the caravan"

not what it first appears if you click all the way through:

This is tremendously powerful, Andy. https://t.co/uph8FhSLlx
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) November 1, 2018

caught my eye after reading

artappraiser — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 23:51:09 +0000

In reply to Thinking outside the vox

caught my eye after reading your comment; of course it's a "thing" we've all surmised from history, but interesting to see it in a recent psychology paper:

Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton, and colleagues have shown that distrust of an out-group is linked to anger and impulses toward violence. This is particularly true when a society faces economic hardship and people are led to see outsiders as competitors for their jobs.

from Op-ed by a psychiatrist @ NYTimes.com, Oct. 31

The Neuroscience of Hate Speech
Humans are social creatures who are easily influenced by the anger and rage that are everywhere these days.

this from that was also interesting as far as the whole tribal thing:

At the same time, politicians like Mr. Trump who stoke anger and fear in their supporters provoke a surge of stress hormones, like cortisol and norepinephrine, and engage the amygdala, the brain center for threat. One study, for example, that focused on “the processing of danger” showed that threatening language can directly activate the amygdala. This makes it hard for people to dial down their emotions and think before they act.

Mr. Trump has managed to convince his supporters that America is the victim and that we face an existential threat from imagined dangers like the migrant caravan and the “fake, fake disgusting news.”