@Kestrel said in Covid-19 Gallows Humor:
It wasn't even very good gaslighting. He can surely come up with better lies than that.
To lift from the Avatar section of 2nd Edition Unknown Armies:
Taboos: Whatever doubt the Demagogue might feel, no matter what reservations might plague him privately, the Demagogue never admits he was wrong, especially not in public. There can be weaseling (“It now appears that I was given incorrect information—but the basic premises of my ideas are still as logical and rock-solid as ever . . .”) and waffling (“Oh, you misinterpreted what I said. Here’s what I meant . . .”) but any show of ideological softness is a break with the archetype.
This doesn’t mean the Demagogue can’t change his position or contradict himself. Far from it—all it means is that each change and contradiction has to be presented as the logical consequence of what went before. If you said the Information Superhighway was bad last Thursday and now you’re saying it’s good, that’s not a problem. You have many options. One is to explain that what you said last Thursday was deliberately misinterpreted by your enemies (the CIA, a crypto-fascist political conspiracy, the bleeding-heart liberal press, whoever).
The other is to simply bull your way through: “My position on the Information Superhighway has not changed, and I will not stand for these smears and accusations!”
Released in 2002, BTW. Just... putting that out there.