Not Robots, it's Trumpbots who are the real threat!

The following article at AlerNet, by Jeremy Sherman, got it exactly right about my cultist and Trumpbot friend in Milwaukee. It should help end that empty frustrating feeling that you get after wasting many of your best arguments on someone who is by default, always right and always wins:

Throughout history people have fallen for an easy way out of life’s complications by just pretending that they can do no wrong ... they find trumped-up rationalizations that they pretend trump all challenges to their absolute authority ... be completely undisciplined, no consistency in the playing of those trumped-up trump cards, discipline to play with absolute confidence whichever cards work in the moment paying no attention to reality, or the meaning of the things you say since all that matters is keeping up the appearance of winning. 

Call it trumpbotting, acting like a robot programmed to pretend to trump every challenge, sorting all wins to you and loses to whoever challenges or threatens your authority. To trumpbot you need to know almost nothing and yet you get to act like a complete and absolute know-it-all.

For a trumpbot to stay on message, there can’t be a message other than a relentless “See? I win!” Trumpbots cloak themselves in whatever fake crusade justifies declaring total war against all of their competition. It gives trumpbots a fake high horse to attack from, and a claim that their passionate commitment to their moral cause, proves that they’re right about everything.

They’re ready for your reaction whatever it may be. If you scold them they’ll call you a prude. If you walk away, they’ll call you a chicken. If you try to be nice to them, they’ll call you a wimp. If you act out, they’ll call you upset. If you attack them they’ll scold you for being uncivil. They’ll posture automatically and robotically any which way to maintain their false appearance of invincibility.

How do you beat people whose sole goal is remaining unbeatable? How do you correct the incorrigible? How does having standards ever beat have no standards other than winning?

Don’t try to persuade a trumpbot. Talk past the trumpbot to the audience. He’s just a specimen of mindless, mechanical, pretend invincibility. 

Whatever your standards, a trumpbot will make you wrong for having them. 

Anyone can become a trumpbot. He thinks he’s special. Far from it. He’s just another in a long line of people for whom reality is too scary to face ... learning how to shut down know-nothing, know-it-all trumpbots who pretend they’re done learning ... With trumpbots it’s not that the emperor has no clothes. It’s that the emperor is nothing but clothes, a suit of armor with nobody home.