88
" A journalist who assumes that Trump’s intention is unknowable, that repeated false statements—when the truth is indeed knowable—do not, factually, constitute lying, is abdicating the responsibility to tell the story, to provide the context of what happened a year ago, yesterday, or even in parallel with the lying. The journalist becomes complicit in creating the bizarre sense of ahistoricism of the Trump era, which seems to exist only, ever, in the current moment. "
― Masha Gessen , Surviving Autocracy
90
" Following Trump’s lead, everyone, it seemed, took to calling the procession a “caravan.” The journalist Luke O’Neil pointed out that the word’s Persian roots conjured the image of “people trekking across the desert with camels (i.e., terrorists of course).” What if journalists had resisted adopting Trumpian language in this case? They might have described the procession as the spontaneous movement of thousands who were fleeing a place more than they were pursuing a destination. They might even have called it an exodus, a term and an image that would have appealed to empathy—and tapped into religious associations—rather than to fear. A December 2018 study by MIT Media Lab showed that over the course of 2018, coverage of the movement of Central Americans toward the U.S. border had shed the words “refugee” and even “immigrant” and shifted instead to “migrant.” Study author Emily Boardman Ndulue wrote, “‘Migrants’ convey[s] individuals who are by nature itinerant, while ‘refugees’ impl[ies] those affected by situationally-forced migration, and ‘immigrants’ impl[ies] that the individuals will be entering and settling in the US. The media’s adoption of the phrase ‘migrant caravan’ and ‘migrants’ is further evidence of the adoption of Trump’s anti-immigrant framing and rhetoric. "
― Masha Gessen , Surviving Autocracy
96
" Trusting one’s own perceptions is a lonely lot; believing one’s own eyes and being vocal about it is dangerous. Believing the propaganda—or, rather, accepting the propaganda as one’s reality—carries the promise of a less anxious existence, in harmony with the majority of one’s fellow citizens. The path to peace of mind lies in giving one’s mind over to the regime. Bizarrely, the experience of living in the United States during the Trump presidency reproduces this dilemma. Being an engaged citizen of Trump’s America means living in a constant state of cognitive tension. One cannot put the president and his lies out of one’s mind, because he is the president. Accepting that the president continuously tweets or says things that are not true, are known not to be true, are intended to be heard or read as power lies, and will continue to be broadcast—on Twitter and by the media—after they have been repeatedly disproven means accepting a constant challenge to fact-based reality. In effect, it means that the two realities—Trumpian and fact-based—come to exist side by side, on equal ground. The tension is draining. The need to pay constant attention to the lies is exhausting, and it is compounded by the feeling of helplessness in the face of the ridiculous and repeated lies. Most Americans in the age of Trump are not, like the subjects of a totalitarian regime, subjected to state terror. But even before the coronavirus, they were subjected to constant, sometimes debilitating anxiety. "
― Masha Gessen , Surviving Autocracy
