LJ Schaffnit: Trump's goal is to denounce his critics and the media as 'enemies of the People'

To The Daily Sun,

One of the most disturbing lessons of Donald Trump’s legacy of lies is this: If we’ve been lied to long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the lie. Conservatives are no longer interested in finding out the truth. The liar has duped them. It’s simply too painful for them to acknowledge, even to themselves, that they’ve been victimized.

Despite what a frequent contributor would like us to believe, the “hate” for Trump is not generated by the media, but by his own rhetoric and the hate he portrays; it’s always the sinister “they” responsible for Trump’s troubles, never the man himself.

The right-wing/MAGA conservatives don’t want to hear any evidence that contradicts their views. They are isolated news consumers existing in a media bubble — personal biases impact their ability to authenticate news and they are more skeptical of news from alternative outlets. Their steady reliance is on one source for all their news: Fox News. They continually display “moral flexibility”; they know it’s not true, but they want it out there and it fits their agenda. The hallmark of prejudice is that one doesn't have to prove anything: they just know it.

Trump's goal, like all autocrats, is to denounce his critics and the media as “enemies of the People.” He, and his conservative minions, must delegitimize the work of the press as, “fake news”, because they offer a counter narrative to Trump’s lies.

L.J. Schaffnit

Gilmanton