Bubble world

Surely this is what it feels like to an outsider visiting North Korea and hearing everyone endorsing how great their Dear Leader is doing?   Being told how He will protect them from the nefarious forces that want to harm them?

Because I have never seen anything like the self delusion that is accompanying those endorsing Trump.   Look at Steve Kates, with this fantasy today:

I don’t know whether this was what Trump intended but the stories about Russian hacking the election have gone absolutely dead, as have almost all stories related to Obama having placed some kind of phone surveillance on Donald Trump himself. Having become blindingly clear that the Obama White House had indeed initiated that surveillance, with the virtual certainty that none of it would have been done without Obama’s complicity, the entire episode seems to have vanished into air. Since there is nothing that can any longer be used in bringing Trump down, it has gone into hibernation across the media and will remain that way unless something happens that the left and the media believe can again be used to undermine Trump.

This is part of what disturbs me about the blog support network on the right. It is entirely defensive. A story that was utterly preposterous, that Trump and his associates had collaborated with the Russians was, and is, treated as a genuine issue that needs to be sorted out, rather than as a pathetic and disgusting ploy by a bunch of leftist loons and their scribes to harm Trump and short circuit his election.

The only way this can possibly be explained is that he lives in an absolute self imposed information bubble - only reading news from Fox or Breitbart (or worse) that he knows in advance will align with his pro-Trump stance.

In totalitarian states, the State has to impose the media control that leads to such brainwashing - in the West, citizens gleefully impose it on themselves, building self reinforcing belief systems impervious to outside information - because it is, by definition, not to be trusted.

The other thing to note is the paranoia and siege mentality involved - Kates is always beating it up into a "end of civilisation" crisis if Trump (or at least Republicans) lose control of their country.   And, indeed, Bannon is known as a "clash of civilisations" panic merchant, and Trump will use that language when it suits. 

As for Kates' claim that no one is talking about the Trump Obama tweets now, he obviously cares not to observe twitter on matters Trump, or read the NYT, where this account of Trump's mad tweeting Saturday was given (again, apparently leaked by people close to him):

That led to a succession of frantic staff conference calls, including one consultation with the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, as staff members grasped the reality that the president had opened an attack on his predecessor.

Mr. Trump, advisers said, was in high spirits after he fired off the posts. But by midafternoon, after returning from golf, he appeared to realize he had gone too far, although he still believed Mr. Obama had wiretapped him, according to two people in Mr. Trump’s orbit.

He sounded defiant in conversations at Mar-a-Lago with his friend Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media, Mr. Ruddy said. In other conversations that afternoon, the president sounded uncertain of the procedure for obtaining a warrant for secret wiretaps on an American citizen.

Mr. Trump also canvassed some aides and associates about whether an investigator, even one outside the government, could substantiate his charge.

Kates in his bubble world wouldn't have heard of this...