Stay Oriented

Every Single One of their denials is an attempt to bog you down, and throw you off.

The reason the White House decided to go with "this isn't Trump's real signature, and here's a somewhat complicated, longer than 1-paragraph explanation" is because it needs to give MAGA *anything* to say about this, until tomorrow, when they'll give them "another" thing to say.

What no one in the White House or the MAGA echo chamber will ever say is "wow, it really looks an awful lot like Trump is a pedophile based on things he's said over the years, to and about Epstein, and the fact that he's working so hard to cover it up makes it look almost certain."

Because MAGA is not about using the cognitive brain, which often requires you to think for yourself, and to often have the bravery to admit you're wrong or to go against the pack. MAGA is about the subtle, quiet, often unspoken collective protection of each other’s bullshit, so that their lib-owning existence can continue uninterrupted.

And this is where there is an asymmetry between us and them: they are all feeling and assertions, while we spin in circles looking at facts and arguments.

If you are an average MAGA voter on the internet, or an average MAGA talking head on TV, you don't need an actual rational explanation for the "Trump signature" debate. You just need to know that other people within MAGA-world (doesn't really matter who) are on the bullshit train with you. It doesn't even really matter what they say, you just need to be able to say "this has been looked at and debunked."

So we get presented with Trump's signature in a weird, creepy, pedo-coded letter to Epstein. We understand that this is not surprising, and part of a pattern of Trump's behavior, which has included decades of praise heaped on Epstein, including the mentioning of his shared preference for girls "on the younger side." Digging into the "signature" debate is not really the point for us.

But the White House gets the debate started, we post picture of Trump's signatures over the years to "prove" that this one is consistent, and we get bogged down in a debate about how long and pressed-down the swoop is on his last name. MAGA sits back, watches us get all worked up about a rational fact, look around at each other with a knowing look that says "look at the libs, getting all worked up about rational facts, which we don't care about...owned again!"

This is the national equivalent of the schoolyard bully telling you you're shoe's are untied, and then you explaining how they're not, if you just look at how the laces are laid out, and what the nature of a tied shoe is.

Then they make their own pattern out of this. Sometime next week, when another bombshell comes out, they'll offer up another "rational" explanation to distract us from what we know, and then declare victory, because they are shameless, and have no problem just ignoring what's staring them in the fact. And then the next week, they'll come up with another. And another. And then after another year of Epstein stories where they watch us act as if this is a rational debate, they'll say "each time the fake news reports about this, it gets debunked; they're out to get Trump" which then activates the fighting spirit of people who hate the media and love Trump.

Guys, we're dealing with bullies. Bullies don't operate in facts. They don't care about the details. They are angry, confused people who are desperate to fill a void by throwing *everyone else* off their orbit, so that we're all swimming in the same stew of disorientation.

I don't have an exact correction for this, or any silver-bullet to make an effective argument in the face of this. MAGA has discovered that gaslighting is a much more effective way to exhaust your energy than beating you with rational arguments, and they're right: it is really effective. It's hard to argue (or even care about the argument anymore) when you're exhausted.

The best I can come up with is --

1) leave the 30% of the country that is hardcore MAGA to their fun. They *did* win this thing. They won so shamefully and cowardly, by deciding to collectively stop acting like adults with ethical responsibilities. It will be up to history to judge them. As long as I'm around (as a person in my early 40s), I will make damn sure as a person with a platform, that the shamefulness of these cowards will be known in the future. And you should too. We can start writing this history now.

2) To anyone who is not in the MAGA cult (but maybe not necessarily a lib or Democrat), forget about normal political topics for a minute. Forget about taxation and crime and medicaid, which are all important, but which pale in comparison to the shock of a mass cover-up of a pedophile. And ask them why Trump's White House would call releasing a list of Epstein associated pedophiles a "hostile act." Ask them what the possible reasons could be for that. And when they say things like "well they all do it" or "Bill Clinton did it" or whatever other neutralizing nugget they've picked up from MAGA to lessen the sharpness of Trump's disgustingness, tell them that you don't know a single liberal, or Democrat, who has spent any time now, or ever, trying to excuse the behavior of anyone associated with Epstein, and that that's what separates us from them.

We are not in an "informational war" anymore. We are in a battle between people for whom gaslighting is a way of life, and people who still think we should hold adults to some standards, which at the very least includes holding pedophiles to account.

And I think we should try to win that battle, by avoiding getting into meaningless squabbles about the minutiae with gaslighters, and by calmly talking to other rational people about what's in front of our eyes, even when that stuff is disgusting.

Authoritarians and dictators want assertions, and feelings, and disorientation. Let's stay oriented.