Weird.
Trump isn't "weird."
Trump is a "malevolent narcissist."
Walz performed one of the jobs of a vice presidential candidate, being an attack-dog critic of the opponent. He is on the very short list of potential running mates for Kamala Harris.
Ten years ago, back when Portland, Oregon, was the best city on the west coast -- before the riots and homeless tents -- the phrase "Keep Portland Weird" was a point of local pride.
Trump goes far beyond "weird" into manic lunacy. Trump is sick. He doesn't drink, but he acts like a man with a drinking problem, a belligerent drunk. Trump types out ALL CAP ravings, sometimes of catastrophe, sometimes of anger that fellow Republicans are disloyal, most often of wild claims of his own brilliance. and anger at the perfidy of others. These are just in from last night:
We read about Donald Trump in high school when we were assigned to read Moby Dick. Remember Captain Ahab? Remember reading about his mono-mania that nearly got everyone killed? Trump is Captain Ahab.
Trump lacks self-awareness and self-control. Yesterday's Easy Sunday short post urged Trump to "keep talking," as he used his time and audience in Atlanta to bash the popular Republican governor and to insist, against all evidence, that he deserved to win the 2020 Georgia election and that the state's governor and election officials owed it to him to cheat on his behalf. How self-destructive. Even Republican partisans admit it. Trump is his own worst enemy.
He goes off script to serve his mania. At some point a Trump feature becomes a Trump bug. A courageous ambition to win, win, win, becomes a sick inability to recognize reality.
George Conway is promoting PsychoPAC, a group that defines and creates advertisements describing Trump's behavior. Conway notes that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, has a description of acknowledged diseases. One of these is narcissistic personality disorder. Five or more behaviors confirm a diagnosis of the condition. These include grandiose sense of self-importance, fantasies of power and brilliance, a belief one is special or unique, a need for excessive admiration, a sense of entitlement, being interpersonally exploitative, a lack of empathy, enviousness, and arrogance. Conway observes Trump has them all.
One does not need to "medicalize" Trump. One can simply look and observe that Trump is acting out of control. He is manic. He is lashing out. His repeated claims that Harris has "low IQ" -- now that she is Black in his eyes -- comes across as unsubtle racist dog whistling. Would any prudent person choose Trump to be a trustee for one's estate in light of his convictions for fraudulent and self-dealing business practices? Would any reader of this blog in a position as a board member of a business or nonprofit organization hire someone with Trump's history and current behavior to be a school superintendent, a hospital director, a park department manager, a college dean, or even the branch manager of a 7-11 corner store? Trump would be a time bomb.The red flags are waving.
Biden was diminished by age. Democrats acknowledged it and dealt with it. Trump is diminished by some combination of age and personality disorders, and the condition has gotten worse. Republicans had options, but they stuck with Trump, warts and all.
Now that Biden is gone, Trump's warts are center stage. And worse yet, Trump is showing them off.
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9 comments:
Trump is Captain Ahab...without the intellect, education and spiritual depth. Does that make Trump more scary and dangerous, or less? Call us Ishmael.
It's disingenuous to yell "recession" after 1 day. A recession is two falling quarters of GDP.
Are people really that dumb?
Trump is a psychopath. We wonder whether America is ready for a Black, female president? The bigger question is whether we're ready to elect an elderly career criminal to whom the epithet "fascist" can be applied without hyperbole. That there is any question which choice voters will make shows how far the U.S. is from achieving its founding ideals.
About 40% of the Population, apparently are just that ignorant, willingly so.
For Trump followers, Democracy is just a suggestion. Fascism sounds better.
Your blog's example of a bumper sticker on an Oregon car reading, "Keep Portland Weird!" no longer feels right.
In current usage, the word weird has taken on a negative shade. Portland has earned a bad reputation from the effects of homelessness, open drug use, and street crime.
Before, Portland was considered cute, quirky, and whimsically weird. Not anymore; now, weird means aberrant and lawless.
My point is that the Trump-Vance ticket now carries that shade of the word weird. The more Trump and Vance rant, the weirder they become.
Trump-Vance ticket has become Portland weird.
Many professionals are narcissistic and successful, but Trump is in the extreme end of that spectrum that along with his extreme psychopath traits he becomes unstable , dangerous , and unpredictable. It is that lack of stability that is becoming more and more evident. No, very few boards or employers would hire someone seemingly as unstable as he presents. Now that a viable alternative has been presented, I think the American people will also not hire him.
And yet, the race is currently a tie.
Makes you wonder what the D’s have gotten so wrong that half the country prefers someone like Trump to them.
Could it be … wokeness?
Could it be … exporting so many good jobs to China?
Could it be … out of control immigration?
Inquiring minds want to know…
If MT ever posts a fresh thought without using "woke"as a veritable curse word, I might stop skipping over most of his remarks.
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