The Propaganda Wars in America

Donald Trump is a propagandist: he is winning that battle. Dan Rather said last night before the AZ immigration speech: "His election strategy is to dominate visibility in every news cycle and to date he is doing that." His thinking and speech are often irrational and appeal to those folk who are largely dominated by their emotions not their wisdom. He doesn't clearly define what the well being of the people means except to focus on reduction of what he has determined is the major threat, the major issue now.

To determine a concern as THE primary concern, to the exclusion of all others - illegal immigration is the only issue we should be concentrating on now - and to repeatedly, vitriolically, loudly harp on that moment by moment, day by day is to use one the THE primary tools of propaganda. 

Without credentials in medicine, I'll say that I think Donald Trump has a mental disorder.  His thinking is often irrational by the terms of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and the catalog of cognitive distortions.  Trump regularly labels, predicts the future, reads other people's minds and indulges in catastrophic thinking.  All of those are distorted thinking and not based in facts. Thus they are not rational. Statements based in those distortions unusually bias those that hear them without a critical thinking base of their own, and do also powerfully sway those who do think critically when they are primarily controlled by emotion, like fear.

Donald Trump appears to assume the shape of his container: at a seminar of Hispanic business people he appears rational; with the Mexican President he is measured and kind; at one of his own rallies he is bellicose and presumptive and inflammatory; in a one on one interview he is the negotiator, sidestepping some questions, impugning others and writing his own script on others. 

That inconsistency of value and presentation is a definition of a mental disorder.  Combine that inconsistency and definition by environment with irrational thinking and there is a person who I don't want carrying the nuclear codes, deciding about National Park Status, mental health law or anything else a President of the USA carries.

Conflating, or connecting immigration control and the following ideas is also irrational and fallacious:

1.  keeping jobs

2.  staying safe

3.  stopping drug trade

4.  stopping gun shipment

Mr. Trump simply makes those statements in the midst of his onslaught of words.  He doesn't provide any connection or context for them actually applying to immigration control other than he says they're connected.  That's a propaganda tool.  He uses it effectively.

1.  Keeping jobs:  automation and scientific, technological development removes many jobs from America.  It is not just trade agreements or immigrants illegally manning the battlements of many low paying difficult jobs.

2.  keeping safe:  there are other causes of violence than people from south of the border who are paperless.  Inner city cultural dynamics, mental illness, effects of drug and alcohol abuse among all populations, Wahhabi inspired behaviors, gangs of all stripes and angry former workers all perpetrate violence among the American populace.

3.  Stopping drug trade:  The cartels are evil; limiting their actions would be of benefit to communities on both sides of the border.  However, they primarily traffic in cocaine.         Cocaine and crack cocaine are not the primary drugs fueling the current epidemic in America. Methamphetamine cooked in DOMESTIC labs provides an unchecked supply of the killer white stuff.  

Heroin, the #1 drug epidemic, comes largely from the opium crops of Afghanistan that are controlled by the Taliban.  Trump has not spoken word one about the Taliban and why they are not eradicated and thus lessening the heroin trade . There's a complicated set of spoken and unspoken agreements between US & ISI, the Afghan and US governments, and the US - Saudi Arabian - Israeli agreements.

4. stopping arms trade, like limiting drug trade, relates with observing supply and demand.  Demand for drugs in the US creates the kinetic energy for their manufacture overseas and shipment here. Change the market, the demand, change the trade.  Trump neglects that idea.

Supply of killing machine arms from the US to the world exists - - - recognize the direction of that trade ::: US to them - - - exists in part, because America is the largest manufacturer of weapons.  Limit the manufacture of arms and the traffic is limited too.  

Trump ignores both of those determinant perspectives.  He only concentrates on the propaganda tools of repetition of easy to remember phrases and emotion generating concepts.

      Thus inflaming emotion by talking about the southern border as THE drug and arms trafficking highway is fallacious and incredibly dangerous.  Trump also does not accurately portray the current work of the DEA and CBP who have instituted improvements in policy and tactics and hired many more workers in the recent past.

Donald Trump's propaganda machine garners him attention and draws him closer to election while neglecting substantive needs other than his amplified issue of the day, whether it be The Clinton Foundation, the e-mail server, immigration control.

That attention is sucking up the media's attention and generating mind control of the masses.

It is absent any attention to the candidates positions on:

1. mental health - to neglect the profound mental health crisis in America now is to ignore a source of monetary drain, violence, sorrow and confusion in all American communities.

2. health care - the system is now very convoluted and needs refinement.  Just throwing out everything and starting again is a nightmare of the same magnitude as deporting 5 million criminal and visa overstay Latinos.  The actual logistics of such things are impossible to imagine as a quick fix or a long term process.  Just consider what must happen - boots on the ground perspective - to do either of those things.

3. employment - America dropped the ball on training and anticipation of market direction.  Jobs were outsourced, yes. For those jobs, and for the ones lost to automation, there has been inadequate re-training of distressed workers.  Poor foresight, staffing, coordination among state and federal and local policy and planning have been a cluster f..k.

All those things are AS IMPORTANT if not more important than controlling immigration and creating a false reality by continually saying that illegal immigration is the cause of the problems in America.

That's a conflating, diversionary, scapegoating way of thinking that ignores other crucial concerns.  It is the definition of the danger and potential disaster of electing the appealing personality and entertainment magnetism of Donald Trump.  He is appealing, for certain. If we as an entire population can see past the image and stop eating the menu I don't know. God's will.

quotes from D. Trump's speech in Arizona on immigration 8.31.2016

"If we can save American lives, American jobs and American futures, together we can save America itself."

"there is only one core issue in the immigration debate and it is this: the well-being of the American people. Nothing even comes a close second."

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/31/text-donald-trumps-speech-in-phoenix-on-illegal-immigration/#ixzz4J2c7Kauf