Coincidental Confirmation

The old phrase goes something like this.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Food me twice, shame on me.  Unfortunately, I have been shamed by extending what I used to call "unwarranted grace" to people way too often in my past, til I learned to learn from experience.  I'm getting much better at guarding my heart than I used to be and making wise choices to not trust those who have not earned it, though.  However, recent events show that much of society has not had enough bad experience to learn to do this.. but don't worry.. they will.

I'm reminded of a scene in Wargames the movie, where the main character challenges Joshua (a supercomputer tied to Norad) to play Tic Tac Toe against itself.  People asked what he was doing,  and he said he was trying to get it to learn.  After doing so for several minutes, Joshua finally concluded the only winning move was not to play.   That's a great lesson for anyone that has not yet left a toxic narcissist, whether that be a relationship partner or a politician.  And, until they do, voters of that politician will spend all their time justifying and defending the horrible actions of their "choice."

During the last campaign, Democrats and myself gave literal words of GOP leadership, evidence of racism, and examples of where they planned to strip freedoms.  All we heard in response was that we were uninformed or misled.  Fast forward to present day.  Now, we have the same leadership voicing direct policies to strip away states freedoms, a cabinet that is almost entirely white and male with direct threats at colleges that allow diversity, and enacting plans to do... the extreme things we SAID they would do.  Somehow, saying told you so is entirely unsatisfactory.  

But, even as it happens, the right will bury their heads and act like nothing is happening.. they are already doing it being unwilling to talk about Trump’s policies.. after THEY enabled him to do it all. It's all still just coincidence to them, and they won't acknowledge anything else or would have to feel the worst thing they can imagine... guilt.  That's how you had Nazis in Germany saying they didn't personally kill jews.  They just kept the trains running on time that transported them to where they would die.

At some point, as I noted with narcissists, you have to put two and two together and see a pattern in the coincidental confirmations and make wise decisions to protect your own safety.  We are past that for at least a couple years for politics, but we can definitely learn to apply it to our personal lives, afterward.