Self-Gaslighting

Sad to see a group of relentlessly dishonest people get tripped up by their habit of deliberately cultivating a base of gullible dupes. https://t.co/NL2IUqaCg7

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) September 18, 2018

The thing is, they may well believe it themselves.

A good con man always believes the spiel, at some level, as in the thing I wanted to talk about, the plan Trump announced Monday for declassifying a host of Mueller-relevant documents, where I think they've really gaslit not just their followers but themselves—Nunes and Gaetz and Trump himself in particular. Once again, as with the Glenn Simpson testimony and the Peter Strzok testimony and the first unveiling of the Carter Page FISC application, they're going to open up a box without knowing what's in it, because they've gone and persuaded themselves, for at least the fourth, fifth, and six times during this circus, that they do know.

I'll tell you what's in pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the application for the third renewal of the FISA surveillance order on Trump's former "foreign policy" "adviser"  Carter Page, Ph.D., dated June 2017 (starting on p. 392 of the application as published in July), as demanded in Trump's order, if you want.

Annals of Derp: Believing Mensch

"Will-'o-the-Wisp", by ~robjenx/DeviantArt.

From Louise Mensch's Patribotics (can't decide whether that's a company that supplies orphans with android surrogate parents or a maker of red-blooded American yogurt) blog yesterday:

Multiple sources close to the intelligence, justice and law enforcement communities say that the House Judiciary Committee is considering Articles of Impeachment against the President of the United States.

That's seems like a kind of portentous way of describing a tweet from Ted Lieu, cheering as that might be—Lieu's one of the very best Congressional tweeters, and he certainly always gives me a lift.

This is the House Judiciary Committee. Fun fact: If there are impeachment proceedings, this is where it would start. Just sayin'. pic.twitter.com/Jx2FS2B2z9

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) May 18, 2017

But wait, there's more!

Gaslight

With new improved ending (h/t Jordan for making me revise it)

Charles Boyer as Stephen Bannon snatches the President's Daily Briefing out of the dainty hands of Ingrid Bergman as Donald J. Trump in the classic thriller. Via uafairbanks

Or not exactly, the Ingrid Bergman character was a sweet and deserving lady, not a violent emperor, but you know what I mean. Struggling through the trees of yesterday's long post, I wasn't clear what kind of forest we were contemplating, but I see now that it belongs to this family of stories.

Everybody gaslights Emperor Trump in one way or another, in fact. It's the only way you can live with him, he doesn't have garden-variety human relationships. You have to whisper him into modeling some kind of simulacrum of a relationship that you can work with.