It takes a lot to get me writing here these days. Work is busy and there are some transitions that I’m dealing with. I thought I was getting through the recent events without feeling like I needed this outlet, but I was wrong. Oddly, it wasn’t something terrible that prompted me to return to this friendly tool of mine. It was a reel, posted by a person who I know, but wouldn’t really call a friend, at least not a close one. She re-posted something by somebody I don’t know at all.

This hit the nail on the head.

It’s not just this event. It’s been a repeated theme of Trump since we first met him. There was an episode of This American Life that talked about it so clearly. Trump’s lies aren’t intended to make you believe what he says is true. He didn’t use a sharpie to alter the course of a storm so that we’d think the storm’s trajectory was different. He doesn’t give fake numbers and statistics so we’ll believe them, at least not just so we’ll believe them. He does it to exert his power over us.

“It is the lie of the bigger kid who took your hat and is wearing it while denying that he took it. There is no defense against this lie because the point of the lie is to assert power, to show I can say what I want, when I want to.“

That quote, from the This American Life episode mentioned above, nails it. I remember watching an Oval Office interview with Trump. I can’t recall the reporter’s name, but they were talking about the clearly edited photograph of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s hands. The photograph was obviously edited, perhaps in good faith, providing labels of the tattoos on his hands. A reasonable person understands that the text M S 1 3 was added to make the case that his unlabeled tattoo was a series of symbols that, put together, made the name of the notorious gang, MS-13.

But in this interview, Trump, as he had done before, argued that the M, S, 1, and 3 were literally tattooed on Garcia’s hand. The reported pushed back, saying that those characters were clearly photoshopped. Trump didn’t back down, but instead did something that fits the type of lie we’re talking about: he said, “why can’t you just say it?” That might not be an exact quote, but it was basically, calling on the reporter to just go along with the lie, because resistance is futile.

And now we come to the recent events, and the post that made me jump over here. This person, sami, got it just right. They aren’t lying to make us believe anything. They are lying to exert their power over us. To exert their power over the narrative. And there are many who are going along with it. Not because they believe it (although I imagine some trust the administration enough to not question them), but because they want to be on the bully’s side. They want to be standing beside him while he wears your hat and says it’s his.

I would be happy to move along and not give in and just shrug it off, but people are being arrested, beaten, and killed. I still can’t see where the line gets drawn. I’ve been waiting for a line to be crossed that’s too far, and it just doesn’t seem to happen. Maybe this will be it, but I doubt it. And that frightens me. How far does it need to go before the line is crossed? And if it’s not a line that will ever be too far for some, what horrible things are still to come?

Writing here helps me sometimes. Not today.