The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

What I loved the most about the Trump years, aside from the bullying, dog whistling, money grubbing personality, was the propensity to lie. Fake news, everything was fake news. Catch him red handed, he’d attack the accuser in the most blatant, shameless way. Roy Cohn taught him well.

So now, what we have is an attentive world that, when confronted with, oh, say, an invasion of another country, its Fearless Leader, with a straight face, can claim it was merely self-defense. Or a faked bombing of a hospital, wasn’t them, it was a ruse to cast blame on them. What we’ve exported, this Shining City on the Hill of a country, isn’t democracy, it’s the lesson that prevarication works. Deny deny deny and maybe the true believers will believe that too. And if they don’t, deny more vociferously.

Keep saying the election was stolen, keep calling the war in Ukraine an incursion, stifle the press, ratchet up social media, muddy the water, bloody a nose … it’s a brave new world, pal, and if you don’t like it, well, next regime change maybe you’ll like a prison cell better, get your mind straight, get your facts bent around the right lie. Turkey, Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, they must all love the Trump Doctrine: Lie through your teeth. Shut down the internet. Jail the dissenters, the disseminators of fake news! White is black, two plus two is who the hell knows.

Course Trump didn’t actually invent these notions, he just made them acceptable. To dictators, to strongmen, to a goodly portion of the Republican Party. Thanks a lot, Donald, for making us a role model.

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