Trump doesn't want us to think for ourselves

Note: This is a free bonus chapter you won't find in my new book. Media Meltdown in the Age of Trump chronicles the decline of the mainstream media, the rise of Donald Trump and how the two developments have created a new and dangerous reality in the 21st century. It's now available on Amazon.

Donald J. Trump doesn’t want you to read this.

He doesn’t want you to think about it. He doesn’t want you to think, period.

He wants doesn’t want you to consider the evidence and decide for yourself, because if you do, he knows he’s in trouble. There’s a boatload of circumstantial evidence against him, and if we start piecing it all together, he knows he’ll look pretty damned guilty. He knows Robert Mueller is doing just that, but he also knows that the ultimate decisions will be made in the court of public opinion, because our system subjects presidents to political, rather than judicial remedies for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

So, he’s attacking Mueller personally before the special counsel even presents any evidence. He’s seeking to discredit the messenger, just as he does with the press, because he’s afraid of the message.

Trump admitted doing this to the press, CBS journalist Lesley Stahl said, when he told her, “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”

He’s doing the same thing with Mueller, accusing him of partisan bias and of drawing things out, knowing that the public doesn’t have the same patience as a court does for sifting through mounds of evidence and arriving at a conclusion based on thoughtful analysis. Fatigue sets in and process itself becomes unpopular, so Mueller – as the driving force behind that process – becomes unpopular, as well.

Poisoning the well

A bias against the process can be used as a wedge to open the way for bias against the person, which Trump can use to taint the entire process and to discredit the evidence based on who’s presenting it rather than how strong it is. In logical terms, he’s resorting to an ad hominem fallacy, a baseless form of argument that’s used to distract from the facts at hand.

Why should Trump want to discredit Mueller, who at the outset of this process was lauded by Republicans as well as Democrats as a straight arrow who would act impartially to unearth the facts? Why doesn’t he simply follow the advice of political handlers to let the process play out?

Because Trump is scared the evidence will lead to him. He believes he should be above the law, and he’s exploiting the weaknesses of our system to make that belief reality. If he can get public opinion on his side and retain a majority of his own party in Congress, he knows guilt or innocence won’t matter. Political expediency will. And he’s determined to use that to his advantage.

Think about it

Courts use circumstantial evidence to establish guilt or innocence through reasoning. They lay out a series of facts, connect the dots and ask that juries reach a conclusion based on those facts, whether or not there’s any direct evidence.

Verdicts based on circumstantial evidence are every bit as valid as those where there’s DNA, video, fingerprints or some other form of “smoking gun” to connect the accused to the scene. Frequently, such evidence simply isn’t available. Eyewitness testimony? It’s often unreliable, and can be less worthy of consideration than a healthy dose of circumstantial evidence, because it’s notoriously unreliable.

Despite this, there’s a public perception that circumstantial evidence is less credible than direct evidence. We want to “see for ourselves,” and it’s only when we do that we’re satisfied. We were both satisfied and outraged when we learn that Richard Nixon had erased 18 minutes of White House tapes, even though he retained broad support until close to the time he resigned. We reacted the same way when we saw Ray Rice on video decking his fiancée in a casino elevator. But not before. Such conclusions don’t require thinking or reasoning. They’re based a simple, visceral reactions to sensory input.

Trump wants us to rely on those visceral reactions. He doesn’t want us to think. He wants us to devalue reason as a means of arriving at decisions – specifically, his guilt or innocence. He can't control people’s reasoning, but he can control their reactions to some extent, and he does so by feeding our bias against circumstantial evidence (and the thought process we use to evaluate it) at every opportunity.

Two-pronged attack

Because he’s the president, Trump can take advantage of a powerful bully pulpit to pound home his message continually. He does so through social media, his cronies and his PR machine, who love to repeat it, and through mainstream media outlets, which have to do so because it’s news. In doing so, he makes the very people he wants to discredit (the press) complicit in his efforts.

These efforts amount to a two-pronged attack on our ability to reason and our right of self-determination.

First, Trump encourages us to rely on our emotions in making up our minds. He nurtures and feeds hidden biases against black Americans, immigrants, Muslims, women, Democrats and the press for precisely this purpose. He calls them names to discredit them or make them appear “weak.” It’s not that he hates these people. His personal sentiments toward them are irrelevant. What’s important is that he can condition us to rely on our emotional biases, rather than our brains, to make decisions.

Second, he attacks the evidence itself – and its sources. We should discount that evidence because (he says) it’s “fake news.” Then, he replaces it with his own propaganda – which is itself fake. Because we’re relying on our biases instead of our brains, we’re no longer using the only tool at our disposal to tell the difference. This is why the press is a particular target; if he can cut off the flow of information, the biggest source of temptation to think for ourselves will have been cut off.

He’ll have us right where he wants us. The process is taking too long, which proves Mueller is on a fishing expedition and out to get him. This means any evidence Mueller might find is suspect and, probably, tainted by his own self-interest. It should therefore be discarded in favor of our own biases in favor of the Republican Party, conservatism, nationalism and, most importantly, Trump himself.

That’s reasoning based on assumption, not fact, which is exactly what bias is. We rely on it based on our need for instant gratification in a busy society where we have little time for the kind of analysis that’s necessary to call him on his B.S.

Divide and conquer

This tactic isn’t new to Trump. Hillary Clinton did the same thing when she blamed Republicans for engaging in a vast right-wing conspiracy to bring down her husband – who, like Trump, was accused of womanizing and lying. Clinton denied lying under oath, even as he admitted misleading the American people about the Lewinsky affair. He was impeached in the House of Representatives but acquitted by the Senate, not based on evidence, but on political considerations.

The Democrats controlled the Senate then, just as the Republicans control both houses of Congress now.

Trump is exploiting that advantage, but he’s going much further. Instead of simply relying on politics to save him from one or two serious accusations, he’s striking at the core of our ability to access information, to process it: to reason. Because even if he escapes the Russia probe, he’ll have to deal with other accusations. Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen. Obstruction. Taxes and political donations. His financial interests and his family’s role in all of the above.

He needs us to stop thinking for ourselves, so he’s fueling our own hatreds, fears and biases to divide us as he feeds us his own distorted version of the truth. He’s keeping us at each other’s throats so we don’t realize we have a common enemy: him.

The problem, however, goes beyond Trump. In conditioning us not to think – to accept that Barack Obama was born in Kenya; that Mexicans are drug dealers and rapists; that climate change isn’t real; that his inauguration crowd was the biggest in history – he’s creating a “new normal” that could be exploited by others long after he’s gone.

There’s only one way to stop a steamroller that threatens our right and even our ability to think rationally by dumbing us down and cutting off the flow of information.

Don’t ignore circumstantial evidence. Don’t give in to your biases. When Trump or anyone else asks you to believe something based merely on what he says or your own biases, refuse to simply accept it.

Question. Analyze. Insist on thinking for yourself.

Accountability is Trump's Kryptonite, and he knows it

“The president is entitled to his opinion, but we’re a nation of laws.”

— U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., responding to Donald Trump’s assertion that the appointment of a special counsel in the Russia investigation was the result of a “witch hunt”

Ah, Mother Russia. As in the mother of all scandals.

I’m inclined to think Donald Trump’s guilty of something here, but it may not be because he likes the Russians or wants to do them any favors.

It's probably not treason. And, while it may be obstruction of justice, Trump probably doesn’t view it that way.

What Trump is most likely guilty of doing is following through on exactly what he said he was going to do:  Running the government like a business. Or, more precisely, how he would run a business.

That means a lot of back-room bargaining that will, he’s probably sure, result in a "great deal." This is, after all, the guy who wrote a book called The Art of the Deal. He expects to get the best of any rival in the course of negotiations and, if somehow he doesn’t, he counts on being able to cut and run, as he did when various businesses enterprises failed. (Bankruptcy, anyone?)

Getting things done

Many of Trump’s supporters voted for him because they were sick of government gridlock. They wanted a president who could “cut through the red tape” and “get things done” in a government that too often seemed mired in the quicksand of obstructionism.

Who can blame them? Do-nothing Congresses have become the rule, rather than the exception, and each of the two major parties seems more interested in discrediting the other than in accomplishing anything of substance.

California voters put Arnold Schwarzenegger in office for the same reason, but Schwarzenegger, for all his Governator posturing, ultimately worked within the system.

And was, too many, a disappointment.

Trump isn’t doing that. He’s trying to work around the system, the same way he did as a businessman – by finding loopholes, making deals and avoiding responsibility if and when things go wrong.

A lot of people worried, before he took office, that Trump would fail because "you can’t run a republic like a business." You have to cut deals with Congress, make compromises and play the political game. But that was never the issue. Cutting deals is supposed to be Trump’s forte. But here’s the rub: Even if you could run the country like a business, you can’t run it like a bad business … which is what Trump seems to be doing.

Bad business, bad governance

A good business is accountable to its shareholders; a good government is accountable to the people. There’s at least a superficial parallel there, but Trump’s throwing it all to hell by ditching the issue of accountability entirely.

Shunning the media is bad government the same way ducking a financial audit is bad business. The media’s job is to reassure the public that everything’s running smoothly, in much the same way an independent auditor’s task is to reassure shareholders there’s no funny business going on with the company’s books.

Inviting the Russian media to an Oval Office meeting with Russian officials is like inviting your biggest corporate rival’s bookkeeper to examine your finances while telling your own shareholders to take a hike.  

Seriously? This is how you run a business? Not any business that I’ve ever heard of – at least not a successful one.

The problem may be that Trump is simply so cocky about his ability as a dealmaker that he thinks it’s fine to be careless; that it will all come out in the wash. But government doesn’t work that way. We are a nation of laws, and circumventing those laws won’t overcome gridlock, any more than a business can “get things done” by cheating on its taxes.

Accountability is the answer

In an era where “working across the aisle” and “finding common ground” has become next to impossible because of partisan obstruction, it’s tempting to do whatever it takes to restore some level of responsiveness to government. There are elements of the system that clearly cry out for reform. Gerrymandered congressional districts that discourage flexibility and compromise come to mind.

Here’s the problem: Most of the dysfunction in Washington stems from a lack of accountability. Safe congressional seats. Entrenched “red” and “blue” lawmakers answerable only to think-alike constituents. An increasingly politicized Supreme Court. These problems can be resolved only by increasing accountability, not by undermining it – which is exactly what Trump’s back-room shenanigans succeed in doing.

And here’s what’s worse: Overconfidence is perhaps the biggest breeding ground for failure there is. Trump may have experience in real estate, but he’s got none in foreign relations. Ergo, inviting veteran Russian officials to make some sort of under-the-table deal (if that’s what he was doing) is akin to a college debate champion representing himself in court against Perry Mason. And thinking, because he's always won before, that he'll win there, too. 

If this were a real estate deal, Trump might be able to declare bankruptcy and start over. Starting over after you’ve handed over intelligence to a foreign power is a lot harder to do.

If that’s what he did. As I said at the outset, I'm inclined to think Trump's guilty of something. This, and probably other things, as well. But we don’t know that yet, and as Senator Rubio says, this is a nation of laws. Even if Trump doesn’t appear to be respecting those laws, he’s still innocent until proven guilty.

I'll give him that. But it's also precisely why the current investigation must be allowed to take its course. An investigation he doesn't want.

It's worth asking why.