Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
—Martin Luther King Jr.
ACTION
Call Trump on his BS.
RESULT
A refusal to surrender the truth.
Trump lied about Obama wiretapping Trump Tower. He lied about taping his conversations with Comey and about the size of his inauguration crowds. He even lied about making a typo on Twitter, misspelling news coverage as news “covfefe,” and then had the chutzpah to lie and pretend he did this on purpose. What a jackass! In the words of Obama, “he’s nothing but a bullshitter.”
The technical term for “bullshitter” is “pathological liar.” This is a symptom of people who are narcissistic. A breakdown of narcissistic personality disorder reads like a quick summary of Trump’s most salient personality traits.
Dorothy Day by Liz Yerby
- Exaggerated feelings of self-importance
- Needing constant admiration from others
- Lack of understanding for others’ feelings
- Exploitative of others for personal gain
- Pompous and arrogant
- Secretly prone to feelings of humiliation and worthlessness over minor incidents
The term “con artist” comes from “confidence man.” A confidence man works by first gaining people’s confidence in order to rip them off, like Trump did with his bogus university, and like he is doing now—in running a criminal enterprise from the White House.
From lying about Obama’s birth certificate, to lying about the size of his inauguration crowd, to lying about “3 million illegal voters,” there are too many lies to track them all, but being aware of the size and frequency of his pathological lying will prevent you from becoming acclimated to the lies.
Facebook & Fake News
It has become increasingly clear that Facebook played a pivotal role in helping Trump to win the election. Facebook was flooded with fake news—this weak spot in our media was used by the Russians, who paid for advertising on Facebook that was pro-Trump and anti-Clinton. Obviously the rules for advertising on social media also need to be shored up to prevent this kind of foreign meddling.
We need to demand changes to our social media platforms. Fake news is created to generate clicks on websites that sell advertising. Take away the financial incentive and fake news would die. Websites that purport to be factual news should be subject to third-party fact-checkers that can alert people when the “news” they have clicked on is just a bunch of BS. We demanded that the food industry started using labels to let people know what is in the food they eat.