"Owning" Trump and his imitators

[gulliver]

Defeating Trump and his dummy copycats involves "owning them." It's subtle, but there's a big difference between, say, getting your way in court against Trump and owning him. We need to do both.

[MineralMan]

1. I'm not sure how we might do that, though.

By winning overwhelmingly, I suppose, in upcoming elections. But, that's not a sure thing, really, in many places.

[gulliver]

4. It's hard to bottle or give a recipe

I think we want to own our rivals to win overwhelmingly and vice versa. The owning and winning feed on each other. (And, on edit, I think our side's voters should want to own Trump and his Republican toadies as a first principle.)

Analyzing what goes into "owning" would be a very interesting conversation. I think we all know roughly what it "means" and "feels like" to own or be owned. Examples are everywhere. Mics are dropped. Dunks are slammed. Tables are turned.

To some extent I think we should just free ourselves up more to fight fire with fire. They don't like fighting using facts, science, law, or even traditional ideas of respectability like honesty and fairness (because they just lose every time). Fine. We can get in the jello pool with them and wrestle. They'll lose there too.

[JHB]

2. Please elaborate, because from what I've seen, "owning" is all in one's own head.

"Owning" is never anything that does anything or changes minds, it's about doing things you think will annoy the other side for the sole purpose of patting yourself on the back and high-fiving your pals.

If you have something else in mind, please elaborate, because the above seems rather pointless, more a matter of showboating than working toward winning.

[gulliver]

5. It's not merely about annoying or trolling the Trumpie players

It is kind of a matter of showboating, but it's not pointless. It's "being the person the audience wants to be like" in some sense. It's being the winner, the cool person. It's showing the other side to be the loser. That requires going over and above the facts and logic into the area of persuasion and sales.

We sometimes focus on being right and take for granted the importance of being seen as "the ones whose sides people should want to be on." They're two very different things. I think we should "own Trump and his copycats," not their voters. Some of those are potential customers. If we own them sometimes, it should be in a way that lets them blame being owned (made a fool of) on voting for Trump et ilk.

[multigraincracker]

3. I love the questions the "man on the street"

interviewer does on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

He just ask a simple question that the MAGA people, have to him and haw to answer. It's like they get owned but won't get it until they think about it later.

They don't seem to get angry, just confused.
Last week in an interview, the guy was saying how TFG was really in charge of everything including the Armed Forces. So, he asked if he was responsible for the crummy withdrawal from Afghanistan. The look on that guys face and he did it so very nicely.