and played them for fools.

Ordinary lies are when you try to conceal the truth. You hope they never find out the truth. You accept the reality that if the truth is uncovered, the game is over and you lose.

Such lies require cleverness and cunning as you try to paint a plausible picture that includes your lie as is it was truth.

Propaganda lies don't try to conceal the truth. These are lies that say we're going to act as if that inconvenient truth didn't exist and in fact this thing that's a lie, that's what we're going to go with. And everybody who's on my side with insist my version is reality and anyone who says otherwise is the enemy.

There's no cleverness or style to it. These are obvious, clumsy lies. It's all about belonging to a club and power to enforce membership and punish non-membership.

Most of his lies are like this. Completely obvious. It's non like the magats can't see it. Ask them an hour before the trump lie and they'll see the truth plain as day. But as soon as Donnie says something, it overrides what they know. Membership in the club means insisting that whatever Donnie says is the truth.


Their anger when you point out the real truth is the tell. They get furious because trying to reconcile Donnie's statements with the obvious truth jeopardizes their sense of membership in the club, which is far more important to them than the truth in any one matter.