Playing Games With Us

One must understand what the Left is attempting to achieve with the Trump indictments, or we are likely to find ourselves out maneuvered again. Catherine Yang and Jan Jekielek at the Epoch Times have an important article explaining what is really going on at Trump Indictments Meant To Demoralize and Provoke Americans: James Lindsay. I hear a lot of people who are beyond outraged by the Trump indictments, particularly because so many Democrats have committed actual crimes, yet suffer no legal jeopardy. I fear that such people are ready to follow anyone who claims to sock it to the other side. But such blind rage is not what we need. What we need is a dispassionate restoration of actual equal justice under the law. What we need is a restoration of the rule of law and Constitutional governance.

“There’s a very deliberate operation going on,” Mr. Lindsay said on an episode of American Thought Leaders: Now with Jan Jekielek on EpochTV. People in the know refer to it as “fifth generational warfare,” he said, and although it may sound convoluted, it is simple once you look at the tactics.

They then take us on a tour of these tactics and their purpose:

DARVO, or “deny, attack, reverse victim and offender,” is a psychological tactic that has been coined to describe a pattern of manipulation by abusers.

“Every time that something comes out, they deny that it happened, they attack the person making the accusation, and then they try to reverse the roles of victim and offender so that they’re the poor victim, but somebody else is the offender,” Mr. Lindsay said.

He says we all see this tactic play out in the media cycles: “Every time there’s a scandal that comes out around the Biden family, they turn around and they deny that it happened, attack Trump, and try to make it out that Trump is some kind of actual criminal offender and they of course, are not.”

“This is a classic technique,” Mr. Lindsay said.

...snip...

The 1960s “Rules for Radicals” have been updated, and Mr. Lindsay says the playbook can be found online at BeautifulTrouble.org.

One of these core principles is “middle-level violence,” which puts your opponent in a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” decision dilemma.

“You don’t hit them too hard, you don’t hit them too soft, so you’re clearly not the aggressor … and then you make use of their reaction,” Mr. Lindsay said. It bleeds into a second tactic of taking advantage of that provoked response.

In familiar terms, parents may remember a common provocation tactic between siblings: a younger brother holds up his finger in front of his sibling’s face. “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you!” he taunts.

“There’s no physical contact, so there’s no justification for a physical response,” Mr. Lindsay explained. “And if you give one it’s going to be ‘Mom, he hit me!’ right? And then at the same time it’s so overwhelmingly annoying that you can’t ignore it.

“It’s enough of a provocation to necessitate a response, but not enough of a provocation to justify the response that you get. That’s middle-level violence,” he said.

This tactic is being played out with the “vague” and “sprawling” indictments against President Trump, he explained.

Clearly the tactics are working. We are all annoyed. What is happening to Trump is clearly unfair, but letting those who commit actual crimes go scot free is unfair also both to us and to them. When we let people off, we deny their humanity.  For surely, they know right from wrong but chose wrong.   

 At the same time, I am concerned that we are getting locked into a Trump nomination. Now, Trump did a lot of the things that conservatives have sought for years. But he wasn't perfect, and we should not be building a cult of personality. Rather we should be looking around for a plan B and plan C at the very least. We should also be looking into election integrity.  And a prayer of two never hurt.