What We Can Learn From The Sweden Incident
I was half paying attention when Donald Trump when speaking on terrorism in Melbourne, Florida, mentioned the Sweden Incident.
Sweden and terrorism didn’t quite go together in my mind.
I wound the DVR back thinking I must have misheard.
Maybe he was referring to the Scandinavian country as being a great example of superb public health care, state benefits and flat packed furniture.
But no, I hadn’t misheard.
The Sweden Incident
When talking about terrorism Trump was urging his supporters to, ‘look what is happening last night in Sweden. Sweden of all places’.
And just in case you think I don’t know my past from my present tense that’s an exact quote.
‘Wow’ I thought, I had no idea that sleepy Sweden home of the Volvo, Abba and furniture that NASA cannot assemble correctly had been home to a terrorist attack.
I was shocked.
I needn’t have been, because like the Bowling Green Massacre mentioned numerous times by the hapless Kellyanne Conway and the terrorist attack in Atlanta mentioned by Sean Spicer, it never happened other than Trump’s increasingly fragile mind.
After Kellyanne Conway mentioned The Bowling Green massacres, there was a lot of press coverage.
That coverage diminished somewhat when Spicer mentioned Atlanta in interviews on ABC and MSNBC and then again in a White House press briefing.
Earlier this week Trump claimed in a live TV press conference that was much closer to being an 80-minute rant by a naughty child, that he had had the biggest electoral college victory since Ronald Reagen.
When a reporter advised him that President Obama won more electoral college votes in both his victories, Trump said he meant the biggest Republican victory.
Then when the reporter pointed out that George Bush snr, won more than he did, Trump responded with, ‘Well that’s what I heard.’
This morning (Sunday) Trump’s latest non-sensical ramblings didn’t even make the main headlines of CNN or USA Today and was barely picked up at the time by the satellite news services.
Do you know why?
Because Trump and his acolytes are normalizing lying.
Imagine you’re in court wrongly accused of murder. You get up to be cross examined and the prosecuting attorney says, ‘I heard your mom thinks your guilty, is that true?’
Before you have a chance to respond, your defense screams out, ‘Objection, hearsay!’
The judge bangs her gavel and shouts’ Sustained, strike that from the record.’ She then turns to the jury and says, ‘Please disregard that remark.’
Only they can’t. It’s literally impossible without a mountain of contrary evidence.
You Cannot Unhear Something – Even When It’s Bullshit
We cannot unhear something and all the cognitive biases we hold conspire to make us think there’s probably some truth in it.
There will be people in this country who think there was a Bowling Green Massacre, that there was a terror attack in Atlanta and will be telling friends to be thankful they don’t live in war-torn Sweden.
But Trump isn’t the only person who has normalized lying. It’s highly probable you are too.
Hopefully you don’t accept that lying to others on a regular basis is an acceptable form of behavior, but what about lying to yourself?
How many times have you lied to yourself that you’re not good enough?
Or that you cannot feel happiness without x, y and z?
Or that your life is meaningless?
You can normalize those kind of lies just as easily as Trump can normalize his.
Employ Your Own Fact Checkers
For the most part you will not know you’re lying to yourself either because you rarely get out your own fact checkers and question your beliefs.
Ask yourself.
Isn’t everybody good enough? If not, doesn’t that mean nobody is?
Doesn’t happiness emanate from the inside? If not, why do material things not make me happier for more than a short period of time?
Doesn’t everybody’s life have meaning? If not, are we not all capable of helping others, even if it’s only with a random act of kindness or a smile? Isn’t that meaningful?
I’ll be honest, although it will hardly come as a surprise to you, I’m struggling with Trump and I don’t care who knows it and how many clients it costs me.
But, if we can reframe the situation by learning from him and vow not to be like him, then doesn’t that soften the edges somewhat?
Over to you in the comments, with your commitment to always use the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when talking to yourself.
You’re back with your spam. How many IP addresses of yours do I have to ban and how many messages delete before you get the message?
EVERYTHING of yours gets deleted you know.
Skilful turning of the story line, Tim: From Trump allegedly lying to the public, to us as individuals lying to ourselves. You are struggling with Trump – I am struggling with American politics and who is lying more (Clinton Camp / Trump Tower / or any of the media). Maybe I should start reading RT? All this distracts from what we as individuals are supposed to be doing or at least should be trying to be doing: Live life as best as we can, counting our blessings, not our problems. This may be harder in present-day US of A than in New Zealand, for instance. Still, “Faber est suae quisque fortunae -(Appius Claudius Caecus ) meaning “Every man is the artisan of his own fortune.” Rather than focussing on Trump / Merkel / Zuma / /Rodrigo Duterte etc, focus on yourself and here is where I think a good Life Coach comes in – getting you out of the quagmire of the debilitating daily fill of bad stuff that you can’t really change on your own – and getting you to be the best of what you can be – and to hell with the rest. This is what I distilled from your post.
This is soooo true – you cannot un-hear something! No matter how unpleasant or what it does to you – it awakes inside. Great article!
It would be great to think that Trump is “just not that good at communication. That he is “trying his best” and “the media is making too much out of his little “miss-steps” or alternative facts and constant vocalization of inaccurate information.
But If you do that, you are making a GRAVE MISTAKE. This type of manipulative behavior is very dangerous for the public. Unfortunately, he is extremely good at it. It is dangerous for another reason, If he believes his alternate view of reality he is likely to make very harmful choices for us as a country. Likewise this FEAR MONGERING will cause individuals to ignore their better instincts on the inaccurate information he and his administration are spreading. My opinion is that he doesn’t actually believe it. The lies are simply a means to and end. That end being he has power that he should never have and would not have if he asked for it honestly, even from his supporters.
I tend to think he does believe it. I think he’s beyond world-class when it comes to self justification and conning himself.
He’s going to take a terrible fall at some stage. I just hope he doesn’t take the US with hime.
Politics and (fake) news aside. I think your lesson holds true, that being lied to, no matter who, sucks. And bringing about better change by being more honest yourself is a great way to improve your life! So yeah. I also think, the more appalled you are by lying, the more you know it’s a part of your own doing (projection).
But it is hard to lie less,…. you have these ways to rationalize lies to yourself. Any advice on being more honest and reflective on lying to yourself?
Yeh of course Timon, we all lie from time to time and we all justify it.
Ohh its fox, so its lies as well.. but.. still
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/20/trump-may-have-been-unclear-but-sweden-experiencing-migrant-crime-wave.html
I am sure by now you are aware of what he was referring to. Not terrorism, but a video on immigration and increase in crime statistics.
He had seen an interview with the creator of the video. But hey, its fun to jump to conclusions about lies I guess
He’s the POTUS, he should be getting his information from the intelligence briefings he doesn’t like, not Fox Fucking News!
He has a duty of care to be accurate and not deliberately make people fearful for political gain.
If you want to scare people maybe try telling them that almost 35,000 people died in the USA in 2015 from opiate over doses and that figure is rising rapidly
That is a real threat to this country. Under Obama not one single American died in this country at the hands of foreign born terrorists.
Bumble bees pose a much greater threat.
It’s a fucking game played by super rich people to scare people into giving away their rights and allowing billions of dollars to be spent on arms and unnecessary wars.