Reflecting on a Stupid Conspiracy Theory
Reflections on reflections.
Earlier today I notices some silliness about a Harris event at a Michigan airport.
Specifically:
It wasn’t just D’Souza, but Trump himself got into the act on Truth Social (Trump Posts Absolutely BONKERS Conspiracy About Kamala Harris Crowd Size Easily Disproven By Video Evidence).
Here’s the deal, speaking as an admittedly amateur photographer, but one with a decent amount of knowledge and experience.
First, this is clearly taken with a long, telephoto lens. Such a lens will compress the image, making it look like the foreground and the distant object are a lot closer than is actually the case. This, by itself, would affect what is likely to be reflected on the plane.
Second, as a person who truly loves a reflection shot (and I mean, I really like a good reflection), I can attest that the relative placement of the reflective surface, the thing you want to see reflected, and the position of the camera can have a profound effect on what reflection you do, or do not, capture.
By way of illustration, the photo above is from a store in the Notting Hill area of London that I took back in May. I had to move around to get the reflections I wanted, and even then I am not sure I got the exact shot I wanted.
I always find these attempts to dissect a single-frame image to be so very absurd. A picture may well be worth a 1,000 words, but it is also true that a single image often reveals far less than meets the eye. A single image is truly a slice of time measured in fractions of a second.
Third, there is plenty of additional evidence to confirm the situation (such as here).
And here:
Fourth, if the Harris campaign is desperate enough to post AI-generated crowds, that should make Trump happy rather than him asserting she is “cheating.” Indeed, he is telling on himself that he is worried that her crowds are, in fact, large and enthusiastic because crowd size matters to Donald Trump.
Bwaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
I call pleonasm 😀
I am fascinated by the idea that Trump, who has clearly never bought into the concept of “rules”, would accuse someone of “cheating”. I suspect that in his poor sick mind that’s simply a synonym for “winning”…
Trump asserts. Almost as often, he asserts, but contrary to evidence.
It’s sad how many people, considered thought leaders, are either transparent hucksters, running 3 card monte, or are as attached to reality as an avenue corner eschatologist.
Well you’ve done it. Now no Republican will believe you’ve ever been to Notting Hill.
People like Jack and maybe JKB will remain convinced the crowd is fictitious, a hoax, because inside the Conservative information bubble truth and facts do not intrude.
(In the real world, there are all sorts of pictures of that crowd take from different angles by various people – irrelevant to Conservamedia).
@charontwo:
Trump has two important motivations that are in tension with each other – winning the election and staying out of prison versus riling up adoring crowds to feed his narcissistic need for adulation.
Repeating D’Souza BS is great for the narcissism feeding, maybe not all that helpful for any shreds of credibility he may still have outside MAGA world.
@charontwo:
Although, on furthur reflection, he is probably too cognitively impaired now to grasp that D’Souza is consistantly full of shit, believes the BS.
@charontwo:
You know, if someone ever makes a movie about the frog and the scorpion fable, the Felon would be very believable as the scorpion.
@Kathy: “I call pleonasm”
I already find this site useful and entertaining, but if I can learn a new word everyday, too, that makes it indispensable. Thanks!
This is what Trump does, flood the sirwaves and bandwidth with sewage.
At the very least it, the predictable media attention, accomplishes exactly what Trump desires, shifting the spotlight to him. For Trump nothing is worse than no attention, no coverage.
@wr: I had the same reaction!
I love me an obscure word that perfectly describes something that needs describin’. “Ennui”; “Angst”; “Schadenfreude”. It’s not just that these words tightly describe highly specific things, it’s that they tell us something about the human condition just by existing.
Two of my favorite words in this category are: “Defenestration”, which I first came across in a discussion of all the different words the Medici era Italians had for assassination. In this context it meant “killing someone by throwing them out a window” and I felt it spoke volumes about what it was like to be a political actor in that era. I went down a rabbit hole upon learning that and found, for example, there was an insane number of words just to describe specific methods of assassination by poisoning.
The second word is “glaire”. Which means the white of an egg or, for my purpose, a gelatinous substance resembling the white of an egg. I was reading a novel and one of the characters woke up in a daze and fumbled around the top of his nightstand for something, until his hand landed in a glaire, and as it registered came awake on a wave of disgust. I immediately pulled the dictionary off my bedside table, but I knew exactly what the definition was going to be. The human revulsion towards slime and pus and ooze is just so overwhelming, it must be universal.
[BTW. Windows 11, DuckDuckGo browser, no edit button]
Dinesh D’Souza should be ignored. He’s a complete loon.
Conservatives are absolutely TRYING to find a conspiracy because they cannot accept what’s happened with all of the excitement surrounding Harris.
Whatever, sure guys, it’s a conspiracy, there’s no one there. We promise. You can all stay home in November because no one is supporting her… wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.
Also, +1 for Kathy teaching me a new word!
@Kathy: Guilty as charged!
@Kurtz:
100%
Crowd size is one of the pillars Trump used to support his stolen election nonsense. His delusional mind tells him that big rally crowds = big vote tallies, so in 2020, when “Joe Biden was hiding in his basement” and Trump was drawing big crowds (and spreading CV-19), he simply MUST have had more votes. With that Trumpian logic, Harris drawing big crowds is a double kick in the nuts for TFG, and he simply had to cry foul. {“d’sousa” is how citizens in Mumbai say “bullshit.”}
I think Trump’s goal is to use the word “Cheat” and “Election Interference” as frequently as possible in relation to Harris’s campaign so if he loses, he has already chummed the waters about the illegitimacy of her victory.
Kamala is drawing bigger crowds than Trump and it is really getting under his skin. The Harris/Walz campaign knows this and are kind of baiting him, goading him.
@al Ameda:
Repeating for emphasis. Let’s try our best not to encourage it by talking about he and everything his lackeys spit out. (And sleazeball d’Souza has to do this to pay Trump back for the pardon.)
More fun etymology facts. It turns out that “cheat” in the sense of “unethically deprive of (something)” derives from the Old French escheat, meaning “when the monarch takes ownership of property because there are no surviving heirs.” The sequence of usages went something like:
1. Confiscate property whose legal owners have all died
2. Confiscate property (for any reason)
3. Confiscate (anything) — mid-15th century
4. Deprive unfairly (of anything) (1580)
5. Deceive or trick (1630s)
As you can guess, the king’s escheat agents did not have a reputation for probity.