Trump

9 XI 2024: Very good question

See on CNN the editorial by Smercornish “Did Trump change America or reveal it?” 

Ever since the rise of Trumpism I’ve been scratching my head, asking “Who knew? Who knew that the American electorate is so ignorant, sub-rational, amoral?” But the question cited above is the answer. People like me have been clinging to the hope that America still means what it says, remains committed to the values it has professed. But it is now clear that the majority of Americans have abandoned, indeed, probably have never accepted these values. This fact has been evident all along, but our hope and self-deception blinded us to it.

21 II 2024: Catholics and fascists marching forward together!

It is reported that in a harangue in Iowa Trump declared that “Marxists and fascists” are “going hard” against Catholics. I think Trump was a bit mixed up here. Yes, Marxists have always had it in for Catholics, and fascists have in the past persecuted some Catholics. But nowadays reactionaries in the American Catholic church and American fascists seem to be allies, much in the same way as Pseudoevangelicals and the Republican Party.

18 XI 2013: Trump + Fascists  = Trascists? 

I’ve seen here and there various writers expressing there anxiety about Donald Trump misstatments, his mixing up one opponent with another, one war with another, one dictator with another, etc. As a member of the geriatric club myself, I can feel some degree of understanding, even compassion for another elder who gets his words mixed up. But Trump, and his garbleings and confusions are repulsive. He makes much of President Biden’s senior failings. This is only a variant of his usual attribution to an opponent of his own signature frailties and vices, lying, stealing, selective realities, dementia, incontinence, etc. 

I must wonder though about Trump’s now famous “vermin” pledge made to the mob in New Hampshire: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” 

This list of vermin combines apples and oranges. Yes, communists, Marxists, and radical left thugs might, I suppose, be grouped together. But fascists is a community quite different from the other three, one that includes Trump himself and his cultists. He is thoughtlessly promising to root out those he had in mind when he said after the Charlottesville riot that there were good people on both sides.

26 VIII 2022: Trump the magician

Trump seems to be claiming that he could declassify documents by thinking they were declassified. He wants us to share his belief that by merely wanting them declassified, even retrospectively, he could declassify any number of documents, even though he might be the only one who knew that they were magically declassified.

This sort of magical thinking works well for Trump, for it is simply delusional, thus appropriate for a man who could make believe that he won the election and that all the world admires him.

16 VI 2022: Donald and Delvey

I ended my last entry with a ludicrous connection between Trump and the now legendary hoaxer Anna Delvey. But, upon thought, this connection does not seem wholly silly, since these two are kindred spirits with obvious parallels in their behavior.

Both pretend to have enormous wealth, though Trump is a chronic bankrupt, Delvey is always embarrassed for cash, and neither ever stops stealing.

Both pretend to have a background in high society, but neither has.

Both adjust their assumed personalities to their audience by reconstructing their speech. Trump speaks a coarse version of the vernacular although he boasts of his high-end education, and Delvin, like a chameleon, varies her “accent” from British to German to Russian. 

Both are astonishingly disloyal and rip off “friends” just as they do strangers. 

Both are compulsive and accomplished liars and have no life apart from their cons.

15 VI 2022: Trump cannot not be Trump

I applaud the House Select Committee for the way they are presenting the facts of Trump’s failed power-grab to the American people. I do wonder, however, at the affect of surprise that attends the statements of commentators and analysts about the Committee’s findings.

What would be really surprising would be to learn that Trump did not lie and cheat. I wonder if, after he is released from prison, Netflix will make a series about Trump like the one they produced about another complete fraudster, Anna Sorokin (Anna Delvey).

15 X 2021: Let’s take a shower

Donald Trump recently assured assembled Republicans that he is “not into golden showers.” Trump can speak for himself, but as for the Republicans, Trump has been pissing on them for 4+ years and far from objecting, they seem to have grown accustomed to it and some of them really seem to enjoy it.

14 IX 2021: Another imaginative attack by Donald Trump

I read that Little Donny Trump has taken to calling Gen. Mark Milley a traitor. Again Trump falls back on his usual maneuver of charging others with the misdeeds of which he is most guilty. It’s the same old pattern. 

Trump has called lots of people traitor and while doing so has made it clear that he does not know what “treason” means. He thinks “treason” means not doing what Trump wants. 

Gen. Milley is, of course, a military man and has no psychiatric training as far as I know, but one needn’t be a psychiatrist to conclude correctly that Trump was in a serious mental decline after the election. Of course, screaming fits, suborning rebellion, full time delusions of election fraud, and daydreams of his imminent “reinstatement” in the month of August are signs of a mental decline, but I would not connect them necessarily with loss of the election, because Trump has been this way all his life.