Anchoring Your Thoughts Against the Blizzard of Trumpist Lies Is Very Important for You!
Proper mental hygiene is essential if you are to be a useful part of humanity-as-an-anthology-intelligence over the next four years. Start now! Remember: Ukraine has never been in any sense...
Proper mental hygiene is essential if you are to be a useful part of humanity-as-an-anthology-intelligence over the next four years. Start now! Remember: Ukraine has never been in any sense "ungrateful” to the United States & the aid it has provided. Every single day please ground your mind in reality by surfing over to Daniel Dale <https://www.cnn.com/profiles/daniel-dale> at CNN—his “Fact Check” series…
Martin Mycielski, back in 2017, gave us some important advice about how we should be thinking and behaving today:
Martin Mycielski: The Authoritarian Régime Survival Guide: ‘1. They will come to power with a campaign based on fear, scaremongering and distorting the truth. Nevertheless, their victory will be achieved through a democratic electoral process. But beware, as this will be their argument every time you question the legitimacy of their actions. They will claim a mandate from the People to change the system. Remember – gaining power through a democratic system does not give them permission to cross legal boundaries and undermine said democracy.
2. They will divide and rule…. Don’t let them divide you – remember you’re one People, one Nation, with one common good. 3. They will subjugate state media…. Fight for every media outlet, every journalist…. There’s no hope for freedom where there is no free press. 4. They will create chaos…. See through the chaos, the fake danger, expose it…. 5. They will distort the truth, deny facts and blatantly lie…. Always think critically, fact-check and point out the truth, expose ignorance with facts. 6. They will incite and then leak fake, superficial “scandals”…. See through superficial topics… and focus on what they are actually doing.
7. They will propose shocking laws to provoke your outrage… [then] seemingly back off…. In the meantime they will push through less “flashy” legislation…. Focus your fight on what really matters. 8. When invading your liberal sensibilities they will focus on what hurts the most…. Women and minorities have to be ready to fight the hardest… and you must fight together with them. 9. They will try to take control of the judiciary…. Preserve the independence of your courts at all cost…. 10. They will try to limit freedom of assembly…. Oppose any legislation attempting to interfere with freedom of assembly….
11. They will distort the language, coin new terms and labels, repeat shocking phrases until you accept them as normal and subconsciously associate them with whom they like…. Fight changes in language in the public sphere, remind and preserve the true meaning of words. 12. They will take over your national symbols…. Show your national symbols with pride, let them give you strength, not associate you with the tyranny they brought onto your country. 13. They will try to rewrite history to suit their needs and use the education system to support their agenda…. Guard the education of your children, teach them critical thinking…. 14. They will alienate foreign allies and partners, convincing you don’t need them…. Don’t let them build walls promising you security instead of bridges giving you prosperity. 15. They will eventually manipulate the electoral system…. Oppose any changes to electoral law….
And above all, be strong, fight, endure, and remember you’re on the good side of history. EVERY authoritarian, totalitarian and fascist regime in history eventually failed, thanks to the PEOPLE.
– With love, your Eastern European friends… <https://verfassungsblog.de/the-authoritarian-regime-survival-guide/>
With respect to (1), (3), (5), (6), (11), and (13), you should—every day—be grounding your mind in reality by surfing over to Daniel Dale <https://www.cnn.com/profiles/daniel-dale> at CNN—his “Fact Check” series. And you should be boosting and reposting it and its conclusions, spreading it as far as possible through your own network.
Today, you should be boosting:
Daniel Dale: Fact check: 33 times Zelensky thanked Americans and US leaders: ‘During a remarkably combative Oval Office meeting on Friday, both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he was insufficiently thankful. “You have to be thankful. You don’t have the cards,” Trump said, adding a bit later, “You gotta be more thankful.”… It’s worth noting that Zelensky has thanked the United States on numerous occasions since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 – expressing gratitude to Trump and President Joe Biden, to members of Congress from both parties, to US defense companies and their employees, and to the American people. After Zelensky left the White House on Friday, he wrote on X: “Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit. Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people. Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.” Here are 33 previous examples of Zelensky thanking or expressing gratitude toward the United States, its officials or its people for their support. This is not a comprehensive list. Notably, we did not review Zelensky’s many domestic remarks in Ukrainian… January 21, 2022, on X: “Thank you @POTUS for the unprecedented (American) diplomatic and military assistance for (Ukraine)”… <https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/28/politics/volodymyr-zelensky-thankful-us-fact-check/index.html>
References:
Dale, Daniel. n.d. "Daniel Dale." CNN. <https://www.cnn.com/profiles/daniel-dale>.
Dale, Daniel. 2025. "Fact Check: 33 Times Zelensky Thanked Americans and US Leaders." CNN. February 28. <https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/28/politics/volodymyr-zelensky-thankful-us-fact-check/index.html>.
Glasius, Marlies. 2018. "What Authoritarianism Is … and Is Not: A Practice Perspective." International Affairs 94 (3): 515–33. <https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy060>.
Mycielski, Martin. 2018. “The Authoritarian Régime Survival Guide”. Verfassungsblog. March 26. <https://verfassungsblog.de/the-authoritarian-regime-survival-guide/>.
Siegle, Joseph. 2024. Winning the Battle of Ideas: Exposing Global Authoritarian Narratives and Revitalizing Democratic Principles. Washington, DC: National Endowment for Democracy. <https://www.ned.org/winning-the-battle-of-ideas-exposing-global-authoritarian-narratives-and-revitalizing-democratic-principles/>.
Fact checking is good and noble work, and I salute Daniel Dale for his indefatigable efforts.
I wonder, though, how many people are truly unaware that Ukraine has thanked America for its help; some of the occasions were extremely public. Trump's accusation strikes me as telling an obvious bald-faced lie as a dominance display. That would be consistent with the rest of the show, which was quite obviously an ambush planned to humiliate Zelenskyy on TV (why else have Vance there?) I think that many if not most people who accept the lie are willing accomplices.
That's a reasonable list of steps to take, but far too many are completely outside our control. To the contrary, they're entirely within the control of the party of treason.