It is necessary to expose Trump's deception, dishonesty, and treachery. In fact, the commercial and independent media needs to investigate everything Trump says and clearly report if and when it is untrue or misleading.
However, there is a danger in getting too caught up in the distracting outrageous claim of the day, because it was more than likely designed to direct attention away from important issues. (And of course the most recent claim and accusation is Trump's claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.) But we should understand why Trump makes that claim and accusation.
In Naomi Klein's "Shock Docrtrine," she explains how and why fascists and despots indulge in it, either to exploit the chaos and confusion generated by a national crises to push through controversial policies while citizens are too emotionally and physically distracted by disasters or upheavals to mount an effective resistance, or to deliberately create a shock event, such as Trump continues to do to distract people from real issues.
A "shock event," as Political History Professor at Boston College, Heather Cox Richardson, explains in a Facebook Post, "is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order. When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event "
Richardson says, "My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one's interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won't like. . There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event." Furthermore, Richardson says "If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings."
The commercial media and much of the independent media falls for it, though, and they go way beyond just trying to report the truth. They get carried away ad caught up. But we need to just get the truth and the facts of the matter as quickly as possible and move on, rather than allow Trump and Bannon to succeed in their nefarious tactics of diversion and deception.
We have a lot of work to do in order to get the great majority of Americans on the same page in a sound plan for a comprehensive reformation of government. We cannot afford to continue to have our attention diverted by the purveyors of mendacity.
(Article changed on March 6, 2017 at 19:09)
