Trump used a lie as the basis for abusing the powers of the presidency for his political gain. The scenes that unfolded horrified much of the nation. Peaceful protesters were forcibly pushed from the park by federal officers, who deployed tear gas and clubs to clear out the nonviolent demonstrators. Flash-bangs and the wails of sirens could be heard in the Rose Garden, where the press had gathered to hear Trump speak. And the president led much of his cabinet and senior staff on a fateful walk through a park. They strode to the church, with Ivanka Trump handing her father a Bible from her bag. He held it awkwardly near his head, as if he weren’t sure what to do. When asked by a reporter if it was his Bible, Trump didn’t answer. He stood there, camera shutters clicking. He believed he had put together an unforgettable American image, a tableau of the triumph of law and order and presidential power. Some of those who walked with Trump realized a mistake had been made. Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, wearing his general’s uniform, broke away from the pack to make a point of talking to officers on duty. He was joined by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who also tried to distance himself himself from the scene, which they both feared was a gross overreach of the use of the military on American soil. Milley offered an apology for his presence a few days later, triggering Trump’s ire. “Why did you apologize?” Trump asked him. “That’s weak.” “Not where I come from,” said Milley in a scene first recounted in Michael C. Bender’s book Frankly, We Did Win This Election. “It had nothing to do with you. It had to do with me and the uniform and the apolitical tradition of the United States military.” “I don’t understand that,” Trump said...
What followed from Election Night was a two-month assault on the vote, in which Trump and his allies exhausted every avenue to overturn the will of the people—a sustained effort in which he was aided by Republicans and that led to an unthinkable attack on the nation’s very capital. But Trump, of course, had taken the first steps to this moment more than four years before, with accusations against his own party during the 2016 Iowa caucus and then the full-throated conspiracy theories about election fraud that he first unveiled in an otherwise routine Ohio rally that summer. He spent his entire term moving further down that path, brazenly lying without consequence, knowing that his supporters would follow him and his fellow Republicans would back him. He had steadfastly assaulted the pillars of government and its institutions, attacking their credibility, so when the moment came—when it was time for a lie bigger than an altered hurricane map, time for one about the central tenet of the nation’s democracy—enough of the public would believe him.
I Would Lie, He Wouldn't Lie to Me, But I Will Lie for Him...
I admit it up front! I cannot be unbiased about dealing with The Big Lie... No, not the book! Indeed the book is so well done that I felt like I was studying the history of what has happened to America during the previous administration (and even before). Because now, we STILL have not been able to move on to work within the activities of Biden's administration. Instead, The Big Lie continues to invade even my home as, I receive mail from not the individual running for office...but LIES about the man who is opposing him! Let me tell you clearly, I resent being told lies about people who I have seen discuss and talk about their record and, therefore, KNOW what the man is about! Aren't you tired of all the lies we have heard and are still hearing?!
Let me ask you, when was the last time you felt like you knew the truth about what was going on in America? Well, for me, because I am retired and able to view various news stations who cover what is happening in America and the world... And, additionally, because I love to read, I want to learn details about the facts that I've heard...So, I can verify that for the first half of the book, I was feeling my anger rise as the author regurgitated all the lies that had taken place by the occupant of the highest office in our country... during the last administration.
I had thought it would be over by now...
But it's NOT...
In many ways, it is worse!
You see, we have a political party in America who has, actually adopted that Big Lie...and is working to make it happen!!!
Do You Like Music? I love all kinds...music is second only after reading... for me... LOL... So, why am I suddenly switching the discussion? Well actually, I'm really not... Let's listen to one song that I learned when I was very young..."Jesus Loves the Little Children." It was later merged with the words of a new song, "Everything is beautiful" and became very popular, given its efforts and power in working to bring people togethr...
The song suggests that, if only we take the time to see, or listen, or learn--then we would see that everything is beautiful...
But the inverse is also true... The words of the song, Jesus loves the little children come swiftly from my memory to my lips...Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black, brown and white, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world... Actually, I had to slow down singing so that my fingers could type the words, they are so embedded in my heart and mind...
Do you listen to favorite songs so that you can learn all the words to sing along, or, even by yourself, in the dark as you fall asleep at night, like I do?
Or remember when you had to learn to recite, perhaps, a poem or the preamble to the constitution, you would repeat the words over and over in your mind until you were sure you knew them "by heart"?
Now consider, reader tweet after tweet, The election might be rigged, The election is rigged if I don't win, I won-we all know it! The election was stolen! Mail Voting is dangerous. Dead people are voting. People are voting twice--by mail and at the polls. They bring in bags of mail to be counted, but from where? The election was rigged. The machines were hacked. I won Arizona, Pennsylvania...all the other states! The election was stolen! Stop The Steal! The media is dangerous and lies about the election. Don't believe what you read until you hear it from me. Only I will speak to you. Only I can save America. Only I can do anything I want without any oversight whatsoever because I want to rule you and use the power of America to do anything I want...until the country...
OOPS...those last words certainly didn't come from the last president, did they? Because he would never tell the truth to his followers...And there's the problem...
When you are lied to daily, from Twitter, from news agencies that place ratings over truth, in the mail, from your congressional representatives... and it comes to you day after day after day... Well, you just might be believing every word that you hear...
Like the song says, though,
All the little children of the world
Red and yellow, brown, black and white*
They are precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world
Everything is beautiful
In its own way
Like a starry summer night
Or a snow covered winter's day
Everybody's beautiful
In their own way
Under God's heaven
The world's gonna find a way
[Verse 1:]
There is none so blind
That is he who will not see
We must not close our minds
We must let our thought be free
For every hour that passes by
You know the world
Gets a little bit older
It's time to realize
That beauty lies
In the eyes of the beholder
[Chorus:]
Everything is beautiful
In its own way
Like a starry summer nights
Or a snow covered winter's day
Ah, sing it, children
Everybody's beautiful
In their own way
Under God's heaven
The world's gonna find a way
[Verse 2:]
We shouldn't care
About the length of his hair
Or the color of his skin
Don't worry about what shows from without
But the love that lives within
We're gonna get it all together now
Everything gonna work out fine
Just take a little time
To look on the good side my friend
And straighten it out in your mind
[Chorus:]
Everything is beautiful
In its own way
Like a starry summer nights
Or a snow covered winter's day
Ah, sing it, children
Everybody's beautiful
In their own way
Under God's heaven
The world's gonna find a way
One more time
Everything is beautiful
In its own way
Like a starry summer nights
*Colors have been updated
We MUST open our minds, not close them... And if they are open and all you hear are lies, specifically, if you hear the same thing over and over and over, then your mind begins to believe it's true! An interesting article may help to clarify what I'm sharing:
"Your Brain Gives Up When Discerning Truth From Lies Gets Too Hard"You can call it “post-truth,” you can call it “fake news,” or you can, as Kellyanne Conway helpfully suggested on Meet the Press over the weekend, call it “alternative facts.” Or you can borrow Dan Rather’s phrasing from earlier this year: “A lie, is a lie, is a lie.” In a fantastic recent piece for Politico, psychology writer Maria Konnikova investigates 20 years’ worth of research on what happens when your brain is overloaded with a constant stream of untruths, and comes to a bleak forecast for the next four years. In short: Sorting fact from fiction can become so exhausting that, after a while, your brain simply stops trying.
Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has theorized that to do the work of separating truth and lies, our brains first must accept the false statement as if it were true; otherwise, it’s impossible to engage with it. “For instance, if someone were to tell us — hypothetically, of course — that there had been serious voter fraud in Virginia during the presidential election, we must for a fraction of a second accept that fraud did, in fact, take place,” Konnikova explains. “Only then do we take the second step, either completing the mental certification process (yes, fraud!) or rejecting it (what? no way).”
If you hear a lie often enough, it starts to sound true. According to what’s called the “illusory truth effect,” the more you hear a false statement, the truer it starts to sound. This is even true when you should know better. In a fascinating, if disheartening, 2015 study, researchers showed that if people repeated the phrase “The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth” enough times, the Atlantic Ocean did indeed begin to seem like the largest ocean on Earth.
A constant stream of lies becomes so mentally taxing that your brain gives up. “It’s called cognitive load,” Konnikova writes, meaning that “our limited cognitive resources are overburdened.”
A constant stream of lies becomes so mentally taxing that your brain gives up. “It’s called cognitive load,” Konnikova writes, meaning that “our limited cognitive resources are overburdened.”
Lie detection is difficult work, and your brain can only handle so much.
Well, before I overburden your reading/mind, just let me highlight that other than white men who were given the right to vote automatically, those in the Black Race, All women, and more were brought about by fighting for total voting rights for all people as presented in the Constitution. DO NOT allow us to go backward by the use of games, gerrymandering, filibusters and all the other dream schemes that have evolved in the past to attempt to remove rights to which we have already been given...It's happened once, so far... We must work to ensure it does not continue...
God Bless
Gabbie
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