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alangodwin52.bsky.social
Husband, Father, Grandfather, Jesus Follower, Psychologist, DTS, Author, Professor, National Speaker, peopleproblems.org, Nashville, TN
106 posts 102 followers 101 following
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"For decades, U.S. aid in Africa—in HIV prevention and treatment, in vaccines, in clean water and food—has been a lifeline for millions. Now that aid has simply vanished, and experts estimate that, if Trump stays the course, millions may die within a year." Andrew Egger

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

The purpose of propaganda is to blind. Because once people are blinded, they seek for someone to lead them around—a role the propagandist seeks to assume.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

I remember watching a WWII movie when I was kid about Native American Ira Hayes who helped raised the flag on Iwo Jima. His webpage has now been removed from the Defense Department site under a DEI purge. Can anyone explain how this is making America great?

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

If an authoritarian can make any ludicrous assertion or announce any audacious plan and no one can figure out what to do about it, he’ll take their confusion as a sign that his power is growing. So, he’ll keep doing both.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

We’re learning that Americans will cede enormous amounts of power to an autocrat who promises to protect them from a “they” who seeks power over them. And the more he scares them, the more power they’ll cede. He establishes autocracy under the guise of fighting for democracy.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

If a leader can lie openly, brazenly and shamelessly and not care if the people notice, it’s a way of demonstrating to the people how much power he has over them.

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

A conspiracy theory explains things. It need not be true, just explanatory. If the conspiracy pusher’s explanation matches what people want to believe, many will accept it as true & disregard any evidence to the contrary. Strongman cults (i.e. today’s GOP) rely on conspiracies.

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

“Saying something obviously untrue,” said Hannah Arendt, “and making your subordinates repeat it with a straight face in their own voice, is a particularly startling display of power over them. It’s something that was endemic to totalitarianism.”

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Trump doesn’t see himself as above the law. He sees himself as the law so any opposition to him is, therefore, “illegal.”

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Trump is not a conservative. He’s a radical who calls all who disagree with him radicals, especially longtime conservatives.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Trump tells untrue stories to people who’ll believe them because they want them to be true. In the exchange, Trump gains wealth, power & glory while the people get shafted. But then, Trump blames their shafting on someone else & they’ll believe that, too. It’s a repetitive con.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

If you watch a muted clip of Trump being interviewed, his facial expressions and body language suggest that he’s making sense and knows exactly what he’s talking about. If you then unmute the video and listen to what he says, it’s all nonsensical codswallop.

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

Christian Nationalism damages what it sees itself restoring.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

It feels like we’re all riding in the back seat with a dad who keeps making wrong turns. But if you correct him, he’ll stop and put you out like he already did with your brother. He just turned onto the incoming lane of an interstate and tractor trailers are barreling toward us.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

I’ve said it before and will keep repeating it. Christian Nationalism is neither Christian nor American (in the better-angels sense of that term). It is, instead, a bastardized substitute for both gussied up to make people believe it is what it’s not.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Trump may be the judgment on America that MAGAworld believes is God’s blessing.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

The reality Trump believes is the one he needs it to be. The one he makes up on the fly. The one he’ll change tomorrow if it serves his purposes that day. The lies he dogmatically proclaims as true. The altered reality his faithful choose to embrace to remain within his fold.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Stories need not be true to be embraced by those who need them to be true.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Donald Trump never has and never will admit that he’s wrong about anything, big or small. So, if something goes wrong under his watch, he’ll blame someone else and say they caused it to go wrong. This, the stance of a spoiled child, is applauded by his faithful as “strength.”

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

In real time, we're watching the US mutate into a worse version of itself while those driving the mutuation insist we're becoming greater.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

MAGA is not seeking truth but rather the power and position to tell people what’s true and to label all who disagree liars.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

“A cult is built on believing the absurd if the absurd justifies the cult.” Wright Thompson, The Barn

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

The bigger the lie one tells, the more they must tell smaller lies to defend the bigger lie and, with time and repetition, they’ll convince even themselves that all lies they tell are not lies, but truth.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

“The act of concession changes you. You don’t just learn how to bend. You also learn how to tell yourself that you never really bent.” Will Saletan, The Corruption of Lindsey Graham

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Refusing to stroke the ego of a narcissist (i.e. not praising him, disagreeing with him, or upstaging him in any way) incites his infantile rage and he’ll trash the refuser unmercifully. And if people then side with the narcissist, he’ll gain the praise he so desperately craves.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

I suspect Trump’s upset stems from his inability to do what he’s been promising for a long time—to end the war in 24 hours, always a ridiculous claim. His failure ignited a narcissistic firestorm in which he’s gone on a blame-shifting rampage.

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

Gaslighting is telling someone they didn’t see and hear what their eyes and ears saw and heard. But if one already prefers to believe the gaslit version of reality, they become the gaslighter’s easy prey.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

The most dangerous leader is the one who will never, under any circumstances, admit a mistake or who blames any mistake made on someone else.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

This administration makes daily choices, both domestically and internationally, that degrade America, all under the banner of making America great again. And those who disagree with them in the slightest are then vigorously denounced as far left-wing radicals who hate America.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

When people see themselves as heroic when doing awful things and then convince others to treat them like heroes for doing so, that’s a special kind of evil.

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

It seems that almost everyone in Trump’s orbit addresses any question with a manner that suggests, “I can’t believe you’re so stupid or blind that I’m having to explain this to you.” They’ve either been coached or they’re simply emulating their dear leader.

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

Just started Katherine Stewart's recently released, Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. I can already tell that it is a very consequential book.

submitted 30 days ago • 1 comment

A coerced Christianity soon ceases to be Christian.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

Christian Nationalists change Christianity into something it’s not and then scold Christians who reject the faith they’ve created.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

Those who enable, overlook or rationalize a person’s corruption become corrupted themselves.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

When Trump makes up realities such as Zelensky being a dictator who started the war, millions of his loyal subjects believe and defend what he says simply because he said it. To them, truth is whatever Trump says it is. In other news, Putin is the happiest man on the planet.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

Authoritarians seize control by convincing people to give them power to fight against authoritarians trying to seize control.

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

Crowds can serve noble purposes, like when people band together to fight injustice. But crowds can also serve ignoble purposes, like when people lay aside their individual moral principles and embrace the collective immoralities of the crowd.

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Trump: 1-sets the building on fire, 2-blames the fire on contrived enemies, 3-claims to be the only fireman who can put it out and 4-gains firefighting power from his followers. His followers: disbelieve 1, believe 2 & 3, and gleefully give him 4. But 4 is all Trump cares about.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

Terms that characterize many in the Trumpist Right: arrogance, self-delusion, mass-deception, shamelessness, moral relativism, power-worship, cruelty, and idol-worship. It’s neither Christian nor reflective of the better version of America.

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

If a leader can convince you that an enemy within hates you and wants to destroy God and country, you’ll either support or turn a blind eye to whatever that leader says or does because, after all, he’s saving God and country. It worked in 1930’s Europe and it’s working now.

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

If anyone with a D after the name was doing one tenth or one hundredth of the things Trump is doing, the Right would be calling them the antichrist or a tyrant trying to destroy America.

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

A conspiracy theorist makes assumptions and calls them facts, rejects any contradicting evidence as fake, and assumes that any who disagree have sinister motivations (i.e. they hate God, they hate America, they’re far left-wing radicals) or have been duped by the disagreers.

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

This analogy dates me but here goes. Trump is a little boy who safety pins a towel to the back of his t-shirt shirt, says he's Superman and pretends to fly when he jumps off the stairs. And his people applaud him as the defender of truth, justice and the American way.

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

Not that long ago, corruption was concealed and denied when exposed. Now, it’s done out in the open and justified when revealed.

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

It's bad to have a leader who lies. It's far worse to have a leader who believes the lies he tells.

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

Trump is drunk on power and his millions of followers continue to enable his binge drinking.

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

The sinister goal of the propagandist is to get people to trust nothing so they’ll believe anything.

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

A “christianity” that can’t exist without an earthly power to protect it is not Christianity but an idol-worshiping sect, the idol being the earthly power.

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments