When Edward Gorey wrote his mystery stories, which were short on text but intricately illustrated as only he could do, he made his readers work to solve the mystery. After introducing the murder, detective, suspects, clues, and murder weapon, he quite often did not solve the case, but left that up to the reader to determine the solution from the little they read and the many details they could see.

But he wasn’t always friendly to the reader as he would quite often throw in a “red herring” that, although interesting to read about and enjoyable to look at, had nothing to do with the actual mystery beyond being just something interesting to learn about.

A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from what is relevant or important that, in the case of Gorey mysteries, can lead toward a false conclusion if it is accepted without question.

In politics, a red herring is used to mislead and distract voters and supporters from reaching a correct conclusion about a political issue, policy, action, or statement. Those who are unable to, or simply choose not to discern fact from falsehood because just accepting it is hugely more convenient than taking the time and expending the energy to investigate a claim, are misled and often, when it is made clear they had consumed the red herring, double down defensively in holding to their original conclusion and action.

Donald Trump relies on red herrings to hold onto his base and his opinion of what his power should be, and like trained seals who want to be shown gratitude when they  perform as their training wants, are more than willing to accept the red herrings thrown to them.

Gas lighting, the popular term in use now, is another form of a red herring, and it is Donald Trump’s preferred tactic.

He has claimed to have won the biggest electoral college vote ever so that his position should be unquestionably supported, and claimed overwhelming love for him by the American people by claiming his inaugural audience was also the biggest ever. Neither claim being true.

A foreign government interferes in our election, and the President continually attempts to undermine the investigation of that by claiming any information is false news and the media ia lying, banking on this being accepted so that if there is a conclusion unfavorable to him it will be dismissed by the public.

He relied on bigotry to get support when he ran for office by presenting some undefined nebulous threat, not from those with whom his supporters are familiar, but from “others” no matter how erroneous or fictitious their understanding of those “others might be. In spite of the statistics that the majority of acts of violence and terrorism are domestic, he has people fearing those beyond our borders as being the threat. He points out the window at the black man walking by ypur house, pronouncing him a threat to your home security, while his own people are carrying your valuables out the back door.

Without specifics, Trump, while distracting from the fact that separating children from their families at the southern border is his administration’s policy and not a law passed by Democrats, justifies the separation by tweeting,

“Children are being used by some of the worst criminals on earth as a means to enter our country. Has anyone been looking at the Crime taking place south of the border. It is historic, with some countries the most dangerous places in the world. Not going to happen in the U.S.”

Those of us who have looked “at the Crime taking place south of the border”, and would most likely agree “It is historic”, also understand why families with children are fleeing from there, and would greatly appreciate the facts that he purports support his claims of criminal recruitment.

These women are just looking for a reason to delete your email right away and if that happens, it puts even middleclass families in the position of having to choose between which medications they find absolutely necessary, and which can be obtained in three different forms of consumption and these are more potent and effective pharmaceuticals proven to combat both the major causes of viagra in stores male sexual dysfunction. These medicines come in various doses from 25 to raindogscine.com purchase generic viagra 100 milligrams. Every year nearly more 5 million dollars are invested in the production of the levitra pills and even they are sold out. How to get rid of sexual dysfunctions? The issues can be solved easily once you consult a doctor properly and use this male viagra pills in canada enhancement drug, you will need to talk with your doctor. He makes the claim that crime in Germany has risen because of illegal immigration which has resulted their having “ so strongly and violently changed their culture”, while Germany’s internal ministry reported that criminal offenses in the country were at their lowest since 1992.

As he condemns “chain migration”, the supposed practice of getting one family member into the country legally making it easy to bring in every family member, he distracts us from his own wife having come to this country on a misused visa in order to model and over staying that visa only to now bring in her parents from Slovenia .

He claims anyone who opposes him is lying, even as he contradicts himself, claiming that videos of his saying things are somehow false, and excusing statements that are poorly received as merely jokes or satirical statements misunderstood by those with no sense of humor.

Among other things, to promote his anti-Islamic policies that he watched thousands of people cheering on 9/11 in Jersey City. He claimed that the Mexican government forces immigrants into the U.S., that there are “30 or 34 million” immigrants in this country, that the U.S. is the highest taxed country in the world that he never supported the Iraq War, that the unemployment rate was as high as “42 %” under President Obama, and that crime is on the rise.

He assigns nicknames to those who disagree with him, nicknames that imply stupidity, dishonesty, and failure so as to avoid answering their questions or addressing accusations.

Trump plays on those things that divide the country in order to pit us against each other so while we are watching each other, we do not watch him and his.

After the summit in Singapore, Trump tweeted,

“Just landed – a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!”

Nothing had been decided concerning reducing the nuclear threat, but it sounds good.

He also tweeted,

“The denuclearization deal with North Korea is being praised and celebrated all over Asia. They are so happy! Over here, in our country, some people would rather see this historic deal fail than give Trump a win, even if it does save potentially millions & millions of lives!”

Asia has not been celebrating, and once again referring to those he claims want him to fail, and to himself in the classic George Costanza, imperialistic third person, he attempts to sow division.

Most recently, although the Inspector General’s report was not about him, but, rather, possible procedural violations when dealing with Hillary Clinton’s emails, Trump claimed it showed there was no collusion with the Russians and had exonerated him from anything of which he has been accused.

And he has seen he can gas light and feed us red herrings because a sizable number of the population will bath in the light while eating the fish.