perhaps donny's greatest accomplishment is revealing by provocation the bizarre, contradictory, and above all subservient ways that his opponents think about politics. check this showcase of fallacies, contradictions, and fantasies by the emotionally shattered yet sneeringly superior lawrence o'donnell.
first of all, he repeatedly uses the word 'we' to refer to donald trump; that is, he over and over again identifies donald trump as the american people, and includes himself in donald trump himself. that donald trump diddles around about climate change means that we do: it means to lawrence o'donnell that lawrence o'donnell himself is a climate change denier. that donald doesn't hold certain truths to be evident means that we don't, that o'donnell himself does not. we have a collective consciousness, and his name is trump, and that is on the account of his opponents. in other words, lawrence o'donnell is a nationalist who holds that we are all one person together, and that person is the president of the united states. that position is obviously dangerous gobbledygook, and yet he is also congratulating himself throughout on his own superior intelligence. just track the reference of 'we' through the monologue to see the bizarre, subservient belief system that leaves him in this condition of enraged bewilderment.
i challenge you or o'donnell to run through that monologue and draw from it a plausible or non-disastrous account of what o'donnell thinks trump is, and what he thinks he himself is.
then there is the material on 'truth' and the concept of 'self-evidence.' no, you doink, that carbon emissions cause climate change is not self-evident in the sense that the declaration of independence says that human equality is, even if the evidence is overwhelming. no assertion of science or truth produced by it is self-evident in this sense, or else research would not be necessary. no, 'the truth of barack obama's birth certificate' is not self-evident. that donald trump denies p or expresses doubt about it, or that 38% of americans do, does not in any way affect the truth or falsity of p. truth is not what 'we' 'collectively' believe, and what 'we' 'collectively' believe is not what out leaders say; nothing should be more obvious, and you know it very well: you've disagreed with your political opponents about matters of fact throughout your life, and you don't believe it if you don't take it to be true. your sort of reality melts away as soon as anyone dissents. let's say that 'reality' and 'truth' are matters of consensus. then there has never been any such thing as reality or truth. i know you think you can produce one by 'education,' by which you mean relentless indoctrination. have fun trying, i guess?
so it's on to 'we are so much better educated than they are,' just sheer grotesque elitism, to which his own tissue of fallacies and incoherences give the lie. whomever educated lawrence o'donnell, they destroyed the basic reasoning abilities with which he was born.
really, what i want to say, however, is that the notion that the president of the united states is all of us, or indeed any of us but himself, is a fantastical and wildly dangerous superstition, completely impossible to give a rational account of, and a mere expression of enthusiastic self-subordination. it's incessant though. one of my favorite columnists, kathleen parker, gives a version of it. she is embarrassed by the behavior of her nation (for the first time?) imagine barack obama wrestling a fox logo! oh i don't know, so what? donald trump is no more part of me or i part of him than i am part of genghis khan or kim kardashian or that philedendron over in the corner, alright?
if this whole thing has the effect of showing each person that they are not a nation or are not the government of the united states, that can't hurt. these folks really do imagine themselves as little faces who all together constitute the leviathan; together we are the president etc. show some pride, show some sense, etc. you're embarrassed simply because you are enthusiastically subordinated and now are so confused.
[once more i am going to show you that you do not believe that social consensus has any relation to what is real or what is true. thought experiment: by extreme indoctrination or chemical intervention or psycho-surgery, the fossil fuel industry produces complete unanimity on the claim that the planet is not warming at all, but growing colder. does that keep the ice caps intact, on your view?]