The Emperor’s new clothes

There is evidently no need to confuse the adoring crowds with the truth.

I observe, with my usual cynical amusement, the response of President Trump’s loyal minions to each of his succeedingly unpresidential, credibility-stretching, and grandiose statements and social media communications.

I don’t want to go into his specifics, as I think they speak for themselves. But I think that what amuses me in my own way is the way Mr. Trump’s followers are no different than the followers of leaders of other parties.

No matter how much a leader’s behavior and speech is contrived and stretches both logic and credibility, their followers and spokes people will remain blindly supportive and adoring while verbally and physically lambasting anyone with the temerity to challenge or question their beloved leader with questions requiring clarification or comments pointing out the inconsistencies of that leader.

While we see Mr. Trump refer to a non-existent terror attack in Sweden and one of his closest advisors refer to a terrorist attack that did not take place at Bowling Green, they are not alone in trotting out “alternative facts” as Ms. Conway calls errors by the press secretary about crowd size.

As recently as 1998 we have had a sitting President debate what the “meaning of it is” in 1998. We have Ronald Reagan denying anything about arming the Contras in Nicaragua. Nixon telling us that “your President is not a crook”. Johnson telling so many lies about Viet Nam that we can’t even isolate just one good example. And John Kennedy lying about the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. The list could go on and on, especially if we wanted to include the fast and loose dealing with the truth and promises during any Presidential campaign.

The commonality for each of these and for any others is that such major gaffes and outright lies do not deter the supporters of these people in the least. It amazes me the level of gullibility in folks that allows each leader to get away with dodging questions and twisting facts to meet an agenda or preserve an image.

I keep thinking that someone in the inner circle is going to say “wait a minute; you can’t expect people to swallow that”. But there are always a great number of people who not only swallow that, but eagerly come back begging for seconds. No wonder our leaders treat us with such contempt. There is evidently no need to confuse the adoring crowds with the truth, merely continue to tell them what they want to hear and to feed them morsels from the governments store house to keep them satisfied and unquestioning.

One is uncomfortably reminded of a time of “bread and circuses”.