It's only propaganda.

         Stop sifting through the bluster for the truth. View the rhetoric as manipulation. Judge every pivot as a device to turn an audience. Donald Trump’s words are not chosen to convey sincerity. He’s a propagandist.

         Propaganda is the intentionally biased or misleading approach to promote a particular political cause. It's bad, bad advertising. 

Our first clue of this was that he kept a book beside his bed by the master of propaganda, Adolf Hitler. The book was My New Order, the follow-up to Mein Kampf. Just look at the way Trump speaks, argues, rages and retaliates. You attack one’s opponent, as opposed to the issues. You appeal to fear. You appeal to prejudices. And these are only some of the ingredients of propaganda. He and Adolf have a lot in common.

         Joseph Goebbels, the Chief of Nazi Propaganda, wrote, “Propaganda has no principles of its own. It has only one goal, and in politics that goal is always to conquer the masses. Any means to that end that does not serve that end is bad.” Ever wonder how Donald Trump could say one thing to one audience and totally change his tune and tone to another, like in Mexico and then three hours later in Arizona? It's a good sign he's spewing propaganda.

         There’s also his target. Trump speaks to the under educated blue-collar worker. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote, “All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be.” Throughout My New Order, Hitler calls his beloved simpletons “folk.” Isn’t that nice? If only Trump’s followers knew that they were chosen because they’re considered perfectly dim.

         Keep it simple, if not intuitive –– that’s another ingredient of propaganda. Make that audience feel good to understand what the politicians don’t. So if you’re sick of immigrants taking our jobs and threatening our personal safety, build a wall. If you don’t like Isis, bomb the sh*t out of them. If America has a problem, “I alone can fix it.” “The more modest its intellectual ballast…” Hitler wrote, “the more effective it will be.” It doesn’t matter how complex the subject matter is, whether modern economics or national defense. It doesn’t even matter if you reduce the issue, as Trump has done with Immigration, to such simplicity that the problem gets distorted and the solutions are impractical. Reduce everything to black and white. It’s all part of doing what it takes to win the moment.

         Then, rile up the troops –– demonize the opposition, call them names, fire up their fury. Trump paints a hellish picture of America as a third world country, a place of economic devastation and mortal fear in which he is leading the charge to reclaim the country. Isn’t that exactly what Hitler did? Trump accused the Obama administration of allowing Islamist terrorism to spread under the advisement of Secretary of State Clinton, who he summarized as "death, destruction, terrorism and weakness" –– the same sort of invectives Hitler used against capitalists and internationalists.

         Now, content-wise, it’s essential to propaganda that thou shalt tell a lie. But not just any lie, a big lie. “A big lie” was coined in Mein Kampf to describe a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe someone could have the balls to make up such a thing. It demands impudence, a talent Trump shamelessly displayed when he went after Hillary’s health, when he called her a bigot, accused her of founding Isis and claimed that “thousands and thousands” of Muslim Americans in New Jersey were cheering as the Towers tumbled down.

“…in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.                                                                    

          
         This is offensive and sleazy stuff. When you apply the tools of judgment, you can only conclude that Trump is not trustworthy. And, out of self-respect, how could anyone support someone who thinks so little of others?