Trump

18 IX 2019: Trump cannot shut his yap

I have seen two instances today in which Our Dictator would have done well to keep silence. He repeated a lie he picked up in the gutter, sc., from Terrence K. Williams. Trump retweeted a doctored videotape that, it was claimed, showed Rep. Ilhan Omar partying on the anniversary of 9/11. In fact (does this matter?), the party was on 9/13, an event sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.

I want to know how Terrence K. Williams gets away with slandering Rep. Omar. I want to know how Trump can get away with slandering Rep. Omar. The President of the United States slanders a member of Congress on the basis of a forgery, and we just say “Ho, hum, there he goes again.” 

Later Trump wasted spent several minutes at a spontaneous press conference bad-mouthing John Bolton. He went on at length, saying things about John Bolton half of which were either made up or based on his misunderstanding of something he once heard someone say. 

You see, like Rep. Omar, John Bolton has been critical of Trump, and as with Rep. Omar, Trump cannot let it go. He reacts compulsively to anything he construes as a criticism or, heaven forbid, an insult. His angry-drunk personality takes over, and he must strike back, even if what he says is a conscious lie. He’s the kind of fellow who is not welcome at a family party, the kind of man who is no longer welcome at the bar, the kind of man who chronically, compulsively screws up his own life and the lives of all around him.

12 IX 2019: Illegalities and privileges for the few

Today CNN reported the following: “A lion trophy from Tanzania has been approved for import to the US, the first such case since lions began receiving protections in January 2016 as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, a conservation group says.” I wouldn’t call this news, although it is something I had not known before. But it is so damned predictable. Special deal arranged for over-rich playboy hunter to import illegal game trophy. It would have been news if permission had been denied.

Speaking of the marginally legal: The Supreme Court just gave the Trump Gang permission to break national and international law with its new requirement that anyone seeking asylum in the U.S. must first have sought asylum in a country through which he passed. I’m tempted to try to buy a piece of wasteland just across the Southern border, set up a new nation there, and require emigrants to apply for asylum as they pass through the gift shop. I guess the Trump Tools on the Supreme Court were singing for their supper on this one.

Also no-news is the announcement that the Trump EPA is going to allow monied people to pollute the water even more. Under the reign of Trump, the environment has received blow upon blow. A colleague once said to me of a university’s administration: “If you can think of anything dumber than what they are doing, send them a letter and they will adopt the suggestion.” I truly feel that if I think of something more destructive to the environment, more morally repugnant, more productive of poverty, more anti-democratic than what the Trump Team is doing, I could send it in an email and they would grab onto it.

5 IX 2019: Sorry, King Cannot

There is an anecdote about the eleventh-century King Canute. His courtiers fawned on the old man, praising his dominion over land and sea. Canute ordered them to carry him to the far edge of the beach that had been exposed by the ebbing tide. He had them set his sedan chair right at the water’s edge and then commanded the sea not to get him wet. Of course, the incoming tide gave Canute a soaking and gave his courtiers a warning against exaggeration and flattery.

Our Ruler (some have called him King Con) is also surrounded by flatterers and yes-men. But unlike King Canute, he takes their flatteries at face value, for they coincide with his own self-evaluation. Trump recently got it into his head that Alabama was endangered. He called it “the great state of Alabama,” a characteristic phrase of George Wallace’s.

Where did he get Alabama? At least we know that it was not from the U.S. Weather Service. But whether he had earlier overheard someone mention Alabama in another context, or thought up Alabama’s peril all on his own, he has been sticking to his guns and even conjured up a Weather Service map that had been clumsily falsified to show Dorian menacing Alabama.

Why did he mention Alabama? Perhaps he was trying to play-act the “Empathetic President” and show the depth of his concern for Alabama. According to the latest U.S. News evaluative comparison of the 51 states, Alabama comes in at the 46th place in health care, 45th in economy, and 50th in education. So support for Trump in Alabama runs very deep. Or did he make his mistaken statement only because he was feeling expansive and wanted to show how supremely well-informed he was about a coming national emergency.

In any case, whatever he scribbled on the Weather Service map, even Mr. Trump cannot make a storm blow to the West if it does not want to. Unlike King Canute, who was quite ready to admit he had no dominion over nature, Trump was asserting his dominion, not over nature, but over information about nature. He knew where the storm was going, just as he knows that Climate Change is bogus.

16 VI 2019: Our President an angry drunk

Trump is reprising his “angry drunk” shtik. I think it was George Will who said early on that there is someone like Trump in every small-town bar. He’s the one who shares his militant ignorance and bigotry with everyone who can hear him, and, you know, not a few of them tell one another “Don really tells it like it is.” But Trump’s latest outbursts are more likely to elicit something like “Do you remember the time when Don got really drunk and said those liberal bitches should be deported?”

But I fear this was not really a case of Trump just blurting out his secret hatreds. To be sure his belligerence was not a put-on, nor is his bigotry a sham. This was the real Donald Trump. But it is also true that his raving is in fact rather slick political theatre. We should face the fact that it is statements like his recent tirade that won Trump the presidency.

Moreover, this latest explosion comes right out of Trump’s rules of engagement. Investigations into his misconduct continue. Another of his cabinet members has had to bail out, and it looks like the law has finally caught up with his soul-mate Jeffrey Epstein. The many atrocities of his war against immigrants are coming into public view. No one outside the U.S. has stepped forward to contradict former Ambassador Darroch’s assessment of Trump and his failed presidency. So Trump has again created a distraction, a bit of cheap uproar to shift attention away from his embarrassments.

How I wish the Democrats and the media would ignore Tweety Trump for just two weeks. Let him blather all he wants, but keep it all out of the news. Then we might learn more about his assaults on the American government.

2 V 2019: Trump’s antisocial personality disorder

A posting on the Psychology Todayblog by Dr. Vinita Mehta entitled “Is there a Criminal Mind? What Does It Look Like?” provides the following description of the antisocial: “A putative definition of antisocial personality disorder states that it is a mental health condition in which a person has ‘a long-term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others.'” To the question of what people with an antisocial personality are like, Dr. Mehta replies: “antisocial offenders with borderline personality disorder are emotionally reactive, unable to regulate emotions, bereft of cognitive empathy (knowing how the other person feels), rageful, and reactively aggressive.” 

When I stop and ask if there is anyone I know who exhibits these indications of antisocial personality disorder, I think immediately of our President Donald Trump.

14 II 2019: Trump follows Hitler’s gamebook

So King Donald is going to circumvent the Constitution and build Trump’s Folly by adding to his already endless series of lies the claim of a “national emergency.” The only pressing national emergency is having Trump and his Dauphin, Mike Pence, still in office.

I seem to recall that Hitler’s first step in dismantling democracy was to have a willing Reichstag [in our case, Mitchie and the Trumpettes] vote him power to govern by decree to deal with a bogus national emergency, and he went on governing by decree ever after.

Trump’s peculiarities

I read two impressive lists on line. The question of how many of these attitudes and behavior can be found in Donald Trump I will leave to the reader.

Nigel Barber, PhD. “Does Trump Suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder?” lists the following as possible symptoms in a person suffering from narcissism:

  • Grandiosity with expectations of superior treatment by others.
  • Fixated on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.
  • Self-perception of being unique, superior, and associated with high-status people and institutions.
  • Needing constant admiration from others.
  • Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others.
  • Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain.
  • Unwilling to empathize with others’ feelings, wishes, or needs.
  • Intensely jealous of others and the belief that others are equally jealous of them.
  • Pompous and arrogant demeanor.

The Wikipedia article “Demagogue” lists the following as the “methods by which demagogues have manipulated and incited crowds throughout history”:

  • Scapegoating
  • Fearmongering
  • Lying
  • Emotional oratory and personal charisma
  • Accusing opponents of weakness and disloyalty
  • Promising the impossible
  • Violence and physical intimidation
  • Personal insults and ridicule
  • Vulgarity and outrageous behavior
  • Folksy posturing
  • Gross oversimplification
  • Attacking the news media

I I 2019: Happy New Year


Can no one get Trump to behave like a president (Gotta fake it til you make it.), and stop telling lies??? I guess the answer is “no one.” Trump is a vulgarian and mendacity is the foundation of his personality. All his cries of “Fake News” can easily be answered with another line from the playground, sc., “Takes one to know one,” for Trump is assuredly a “Fake President.

So we’re off to a great start, with our president tweeting about a distinguished retired general “Known for big, dumb mouth.” Can’t he do better than “big, dumb mouth”? Trump has reverted to the playground whence he came.

29 XI 2018: Trump; Putin; Bolton; Confederate states.

Trump: Cannot someone make Trump stop lying? Any hope for the future of America requires the re-introduction of truth into public life.

Putin: His boyfriend Putin has buggered Trump again.

John Bolton: Saw an article on line by Paul Begala “John Bolton is a coward.” Now I do not know John Bolton, but from what I’ve heard of his behavior and from the company he keeps, I reckon he is a coward.

Confederate stupidity: So Cyndy Hyde-Smith has been elected to the Senate by Mississippi, another demonstration of the semi-civilized character of this state of the old Confederacy. In a state-by-state evaluation of the quality of education, Mississippi comes in 46th, just ahead of Alabama, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Does the abject educational level explain the vitality of ignorance and bigotry in the South. They have elected someone better suited to be elected Magnolia Queen because she really knows how to shout the old rebel yell of “Segregation forever!”