6 IV 2020: Trump’s public psychoanalysis

So I see that Trump had another meltdown at his daily corona virus briefing.

1) Why do the media continue to report on these so-called briefings. If Trump needs a psychiastrist (and he does), he should get one and not do his free-associating and re-living boyhood traumas before the American people. What set him off? Oh, it was the truth again.

2) Dr. Christi Grimm is the Assistant Inspector General for HHS, and Trump, we recall, has had trouble with inspectors general. She deserves the nation’s gratitude for her honest report. That it reflected badly on the Trump regime is only to be expected as should we also expect that Trump would blow his top and abuse his office by playing the bully and unchallenged liar. His ass was not wholly without kisses, however, because the asst secy of HHS, an Admiral Brett Giroir, also read the report as a criticism of HHS and lost his temper. When you screw up really badly it’s only natural to regard any statement as a criticism.

3) Someone has to but a bridle or a face mask on Trump. I don’t care who Trump is or what he is, the nation should not tolerate his contemptible behavior. The Republican senators are, of course, complicit perjurers, and there will be no help from them. Won’t some credible figure from the right speak out against this national disgrace?

6 IV 2020: Knows more than all the experts put together …

We elected a fundamentally insecure man of invincible ignorance. He has surrounded himself with yes-men and flatterers most of whom are every bit as ignorant as he. So we are facing this Plague guided by people who were chosen for the job precisely because they don’t know what they’re doing. 

So a common characteristic of Trump and all his “best people” is an abject fear and, hence, hostility to anyone who is truly informed, and especially to anyone who is well informed and disagrees with them. We have seen a scandalous instance of this fear/hostility this week in the apoplexy of Peter Navarro at a recent meeting. Navarro is a trade adviser to Trump and chief instigator of our trade war with China. At a meeting of informed and responsible experts he tried to pitch hydroxychloroquine as a cure for corona virus and then threw a tantrum when the experts wouldn’t buy it.

All this carrying on about hydroxychloroquine, Trump’s drug of choice! I suppose he “feels” it would be effective or was told so by someone he respects, like Dr. Oz. Of course, the President has a natural gift for science and does not really need advice. But I am waiting to hear what Rudy Giulliani has to say, for his real area of expertise is snake oil.

P.S. Didn’t Mr. Modly, the Acting Secretary of the Navy, make an Acting Fool of himself in his denunciation of Captain Brett Crozier. However, I do think that in this case we were hearing his Master’s voice, for both content and style of his rant were Trumpian.

2 IV 2020: Wartime leader? Guns for everybody! The South is so predictable.

Trump has been trying to market himself as a “war-time president.” Thank heaven we are not at war! Trump has been behaving like a wind-up toy, reeling all over the place, bouncing off this, rebounding from that. How do you think he would manage a nuclear attack? or a really successful terrorist attack? 

He has made the crisis significantly worse by spreading misinformation (seems he can’t stop doing this) and by setting a pernicious example for the ignorant and Republican politicians by his intermittent breezy optimism about the pandemic.

Purchase of firearms and ammunition is booming. Does anyone know why? Is it a survivalist instinct that is leading people to buy guns to protect their toilet paper? Or are we going to have a civil war between the sane and those who “do not believe” in the corona virus? I rather think that, at least right now, people are purchasing these heaps of guns to dispel their fear of the corona virus. In these days of insecurity, lack of leadership, and uncertainty about the future Americans are turning to their favorite fetish, the gun. What a comfort to have guns in the house, keeping us safe from burglars, wild animals, poverty, and the corona virus! Or is this binge in gun purchases the response to a conspiracy theory that the feds, the deep state, anarchists, or semipelagians will enact emergency measures that will enable them to come and take away our penises — oops, I mean pistols.

Much of the South is acting right in character in this public health crisis. I read a piece on Politico that identified one set of governors who are doing a good job in the corona virus pandemic and another who are screwing up as badly as Trump. And where are the screwups? Why in Dixie! Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, all homes of ignorant voters and bad government.

31 III 2020: Grabbing headlines, all for Jesus, of course

I read that two pastors of megachurches in the Deep South are disobeying emergency public health regulations by continuing to pack people into their churches. Religious libertarians? No. These are scofflaws who are risking their congregants’ lives to keep the money rolling in and to enhance their reputations in the pentecostal demi-monde. If they want to jump off the pinnacle of the Temple, let them go ahead, but they’ve neither calling nor right to take others with them.

30 III 2020: Who disrespects the federal government??

Our liar-in-chief declared recently that people who “disrespect” him are showing disrespect for the Federal Government. Why?

1) He thinks he is Louis XIV, “l’état, e’est moi” — what a gas bag!

2) Trump routinely accuses others of faults that are especially his own. Is it not he who has shown the greatest disrespect for the Federal Government in the last three years?

And what is it that shows disrespect for Trump. Quoting his own words back to him … oh so aggressive and nasty! I guess we must bear in mind that Old Uncle Donald is not, in fact, 100% there, and so it’s nasty, not-nice to ask the President to explain the inconsistency of his public statements.

29 III 2020: He’s no Mussolini

Been reading about the miscellaneous jeers, insults, confusion, lies, and self-aggrandizement that have flowed from the hands and mouth of our President through the last week. One might think Trump is another Mussolini raging from a balcony on the Piazza Venezia. But Trump makes me think of an much-disliked little rich kid shouting insults from the balcony of his parents’ condominium at the kids below with whom he is afraid to play. Why? He won’t play because he might lose, might embarrass himself, or (heaven prevent it!) get hurt. Moreover, he cannot play because he has never learned the rules of the game, has little or no understanding of sportsmanlike behavior, and thinks all that stuff is for losers anyway.

28 III 2020: Viewed from afar …

What follows is a quotation from an article on the corona virus pandemic by Burnhanettin Duran, a columnist with The Daily Sabah from Istanbul:

The United States, which was expected to lead humanity in this difficult time, cannot even manage its own crisis. As a matter of fact, America could be the outbreak’s next epicenter. U.S. President Donald Trump, who believes that weakening international organizations would serve his country’s interests, isn’t even thinking about a global response to this medical emergency. Sadly enough, we cannot forecast what will happen if the virus spreads from high-mobility nations to other regions and, in particular, conflict zones like Syria and Yemen.

Experts agree that the COVID-19 outbreak is unlike any crisis that mankind has faced in the past. The pandemic’s impact on humanity, they say, can only be compared to the world wars. The medical emergency’s economic impact alone will be more severe than the Great Depression.

28 III 2020: And a little child shall lead them???

I am reading more about the petty and perilous behavior of Trump and his gang in the midst of the pandemic. He is compelled to “get even” with anyone at all who offends or, especially, criticizes him. At least that is suggested by his denunciation and attempted freezing out of any who do not “appreciate” him and his efforts to control the virus. Of course, “appreciate” really means “praise me to the skies and don’t mention my screw-ups.” This sort of childish behavior of Trump’s is not new, though lately it has been exaggerated, probably because of the acceleration of his mental decay. Can anyone imagine a worse situation than our country facing the greatest crisis in living memory with a mentally ill little boy as president?

I am surprised that I have not read about any of Trump’s evangelical witch doctors pronouncing that the corona virus crisis is God’s punishment of the United States for allowing gay marriage and equality for women, etc. For my part, I do not see the enormity of the CV plague as a divine punishment of the U.S. for electing a notorious public sinner, but it surely is the consequence of electing a deranged incompetent.

27 III 2020: Block lies, contain deceit

I was happy to read that KUOW, an NPR station in Seattle, has stopped live airing Trump’s rallies (a.k.a. “briefings”). They have, they say, not enough time to fact-check Trump’s mendacious ramblings, so they are going to present a post-examination coverage of what Trump has to say. They call Trump’s deceits “false information,” and assert that false information has a disastrous effect on public health and national security. I heartily agree, but I would not use the term “false information,” but would prefer to use the simple noun “LIES.”

His very presence through these briefings is a lie, the lie being that Trump is in charge and is taking prompt and constructive steps to deal with the crises. In the tradition of the “big lie,” he uses his time on the air to keep repeating his lies, ignoring informed contradiction and blocking it out. The improvement of his approval rating suggests that his deceits are having their effect on the Trump addicts and the unobservant.

People in public life need to become far more aggressive in telling the country that Trump is not-to-be-believed and, in a crisis like this, should be ignored.