GoT S1E4: Cersei Presages Trump Presidency
Jan. 9th, 2022 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerIn S1E4 of Game of Thrones there's a quiet scene where Queen Cersei Lannister is talking to her son, Joffrey, as she treats a wound he suffered in a previous episode. She states an almost completely fictitious account of how he was injured. Joffrey interrupts to object with the truth twice, but she shushes him and explains, "Some day you'll be king, and the truth will be what you make it."
This may seem like a minor line, and probably to audiences back in 2011 (when the episode originally aired) it was like, "Enh. Whatever. That's Cersei Lannister being a sociopath." But to people who've lived through the era in the U.S. of 2015 to the present day it's alarmingly prophetic. That's because this is one of the primary methods of persuasion Donald Trump uses.
He lies. He repeats his lies. People who like him accept the lies willingly and repeat them, too. They believe them. And pretty soon, after all the repetition, even people who don't like him and didn't agree with the lie in the first place have forgotten what the truth even was.
Better yet, the scene is a two-fer. It wraps up after young Prince Joffrey has proposed a bunch of intentionally brutal policies— another eerily prescient parallel to 2017-2020— with Cersei's line, "Everyone who isn't us is an enemy." Yup, another plank of Donald Trump style persuasion. Define people not like your followers as the enemy, and feed their hatred of said enemy.
This may seem like a minor line, and probably to audiences back in 2011 (when the episode originally aired) it was like, "Enh. Whatever. That's Cersei Lannister being a sociopath." But to people who've lived through the era in the U.S. of 2015 to the present day it's alarmingly prophetic. That's because this is one of the primary methods of persuasion Donald Trump uses.
He lies. He repeats his lies. People who like him accept the lies willingly and repeat them, too. They believe them. And pretty soon, after all the repetition, even people who don't like him and didn't agree with the lie in the first place have forgotten what the truth even was.
Better yet, the scene is a two-fer. It wraps up after young Prince Joffrey has proposed a bunch of intentionally brutal policies— another eerily prescient parallel to 2017-2020— with Cersei's line, "Everyone who isn't us is an enemy." Yup, another plank of Donald Trump style persuasion. Define people not like your followers as the enemy, and feed their hatred of said enemy.
