In a kind of death-spiral of desperation, Donald Trump has been posting “truths” — yep, that’s what he’s calling his posts on his social media network, Truth Social — becoming more and more unhinged as the time of his indictment nears.
What strikes me is that Trump sounds like a man off his meds. I've dealt with people like this on the other side as a lawyer, and it never goes well for them in the end because they're all bluster and multi-paragraph email, text, and voicemail accusations against their ex, me, and the system in general until they get in front of the judge, where they have nothing to say because even nuts know that if you word-vomit that crap in court a judge is putting you in the pokey overnight to calm down. I'm watching the current proceedings with keen interest and a lot of popcorn. I don't anticipate getting a lot of work done today.
Trump has a LONG history of misusing a concoction of amphetamines, which he covered up by hiring a pseudo doc, Sean Connelly while in office. Dr. Connelly is an ER doc--someone trained to handle acute episodes or injury. It would have been more appropriate if tRump had someone with an internal medicine background, but none of those guys would allow the continued self-medicating that tRump does for his, so-called “low energy” that he likes to mock in other people.
Was that the doctor who was alcoholic, and who gave uppers to anyone in the White House wanting them? Anyway, the person is now a Congressman from Texas -- in the mode of Louie Gohmert.
the Adderall (and anti-herpes meds) are a matter of common knowledge. but I'm sure there are others. just because he SAYS he doesn't take drugs doesn't make it true. I'm sure there are benzos in the mix, since a little too much Adderall will make you act like...well, like TFF.
I just vaguely remember an article by a journalist who uncovered the specific drugs back before tRump took office. He and a quack doctor had a long relationship . . .
I thought it might be tertiary syphilis, maybe syphilis incorrect treated sub rosa by some dubious medico Trump used to avoid scrutiny. This speed or diet drug uppers
Now a days, it’s hard to have a long term history of syphilis because of the screening whenever there is a hospital admission. In tertiary syphilis, you’d also expect to see weird motor symptoms--remember how Hitler was said to “dance” erratically with emotional bursts? He had tertiary syphilis . . . There’s a great book: “POX: Genius, madness and the mysteries of syphilis” by Deborah Hayden. Recently, forensic DNA on Beethoven suggested various maladies, never mentioning syphilis. I think that was a major overlook. Even now, no one wants to consider it because it is a STD. BTW--it’s on the rise again.
Yeah I figured after his presidential physicals, the theory failed, but otherwise, it would explain the behavior very well. And he does have weird motor symptoms, maybe not as extreme as in actual TS cases, though.
And it is on the rise again, that gets reported from time to time in the mainstream media. Statistics for any STD broken down by age cohorts and other factors have to be taken into account, plus the relentless Republican war on sex educations and public health in general.
They take something already a really serious problem and essentially organize to make it worse, it's beyond belief.
Offhand the best Iowa musician of the last thirty years is Greg Brown. There are terrible (or just so mediocre you cringe) bands all over, but slipknot might be one of the worst mediocre examples.
It's mainly narcissism. (In his case, as bad as it gets.) It's not that he can't tell good from evil - in his mind, he's good, and anyone who disputes that is evil.
The syndromes and etiology of the pathology matter, for treatment of people open to therapy, as understood by their therapists etc.
That rules out Herr Gropenfuehrer, naturally!
Ten years from now, younger people just hitting their teens are not going to believe the history of the years since that (#@!&$!) came down the elevator stalking the American landscape, casting evil spells he doesn't comprehend, and managing to postpone even the beginning of his legal reckoning until 2023.
Old lawyers will tell you that when you have the law on your side, argue the law, when you have the facts on your side, argue the facts, and when you don't have either the law or the facts pound on the table. This must be what you do when you don't have the law, the facts or a table. Good to know.
My son at age four was a better and smarter human being, as are most four year olds, except those who have been severely emotionally abused. Dumpster never healed from massive emotional trauma around age two when his mother became ill and completely withdrew from his care for about a year IIRC, and his harsh, belligerant sociopath father and assorted household help became his alternately abusive, unreliable, and absent caregivers. Mary Trump's book lays it all out. He was severely traumatized at a very early age when humans are normally forming basic elements of personality, self image, relationships with others, and understanding of the world. All these things are wreckage in Dumpster's case. The rest of his growing up time must have been spent trying to become enough of a "killer" to please his un-pleasable father, and enough of a facsimile of an adult to be able to minimally function socially.
My armchair theory with no psychology training beyond 101 and many self-help books, plus observation of some of the people in my own family, is that children who experience severe emotional trauma and get no help to heal that trauma "freeze in place" in their emotional development, at whatever age the trauma happens, because all their attention is diverted to surviving and constructing whatever defenses they can cobble together. Any emotional and intellectual development after unhealed childhood trauma just thinly papers over the damage and of necessity incorporates the dysfunctional coping mechanisms the child must develop to survive. Trump is an especially pathetic and damaged example.
I think they identify either with the personality of anger, grievance, victimhood, and evasion of responsibility that he consciously displays, and the blustery, bullying, big-ego he compensates with, or the "I am a broken survivor of severe trauma" vibe that he can't help but exude.
Also Herr Gropenfuehrer demonizes entire groups his rabid base disdains: racial minorities, women, and especially intellectual women with careers (AOC hits that trifecta), the disabled, foreign "invaders" from Mexico, China, Central America, etc. Also the fear and loathing that underlies his anti-intellectual bloviating incoherence is something they can get behind, as well as demonizing "global elites," George Soros (code word for `Jews' and other `rootless cosmopolitans') - that's the short list, I am sure it leaves out plenty of other targets.
Just typing that is sending me back to the anti-gravity inversion table and some jazz piano from Errol Garner, as the late Howard Cosell once put it, "It's just not HUMAN!"
I am surprised she hasn't filed for divorce already. She'd better soon or she won't get a dime from the new and improved prenup she reportedly negotiated after he was elected and she stayed in NYC. As we all either know or suspect, the tRump Org is a financial house of cards bound to collapse soon.
Trump is pathetic. It still boggles my mind that he was elected POTUS. His tantrums are like an 8 year old's. Funny how MTG is learning about how the cow ate the cabbage on the streets of Manhattan. Not quite what you see inside the bubble, is it hon'?
Thank you for the link, difny. I will now read up on it. I, too, was stumped. But wasn't it MTG who talked about a "peach tree dish"? She is dumb as a rock--my apologies to rocks.
Thanks, Elizabeth. I needed that laugh. I had to read peach tree dish three times before I got it. ganGreene being from Georgia, I was thinking some local dessert.
Michael L. I have an eight year old grandson who can argue his point so well I’ve told him he should become a lawyer, but he’s never started blaming everyone else and their mothers too! Lol! He’s only eight and he admits his mistakes, but argues the reasons forever.😁
Sounds like a lawyer in training. Be careful, he might have people locked up before he's 18..and defend himself in front of a judge, getting a case done..
Good lawyers are born, not made. That's what law school is for..
It would take Wilhelm Reich to explain that one plausibly, maybe a team of shrinks with Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and to provide an alternate theory, B.F. Skinner, just to keep the rest of the on their toes and rooting the explanations in empirical facts as much as possible.
Trump will stump psychologists for the next hundred years or more. And the youth of American not yet born are going be freaked out to learn this or that living relative or deceased ancestor voted for him TWICE!
Right now, Trump is a sideshow. A very grave threat to democracy is happening in Wisconsin, with pretty much everything riding on today’s Supreme Court election. Heather Cox Richardson lays it out in frightening detail.
Also important to cover what DeathSantis is doing in Florida, with permitless carry and 6-week abortion signed yesterday - and arresting peaceful protesters, including the FL Senate Democratic leader, Lauren Book, and the former FL Commissioner of Agriculture and gubernatorial candidate, Nikki Fried. And the huge student walkouts and protests in Nashville over gun laws, as well as GOP efforts there to kick out Democratic legislators who stood with the protesters. Trump's potential liability for the NYC indictment is nothing in importance compared to those matters, or the other potential charges against him on the insurrection and the classified documents.
Perspective - the media needs to get some. We have a country sliding ever so slowly into facsism, state by state.
Wish the Mainstream Media wasn't doing wall-to-wall coverage: Trump motorcade from Mar a Lardo to airport; Trump Farce One jet taking off; landing at Teterboro; Lardo arriving at the Rump Tower... etc. etc. Yes, there are more important things.
The free publicity the mainstream media supplied in 2016 and 2020 was priceless, didn't work on the second go round because we had all seen enough by then, apart from the cultists.
In point of fact, the coverage isn’t priceless; the vale has been calculated. In 2016, Trump had $5 billion worth of “earned” (I.e. unpaid) media exposure, much of it CNN’s slavish and uncritical live coverage of his rallies. Jeff Zucker, then head of CNN, is more responsible for the Trump presidency than Vladimir Putin.
Yes, in terms of dollars you can calculate it; in terms of the ideological effect: priceless. It offers each voter the option to value it as they please --- as an inspiring, patriotic message, or preposterous, reactionary, racist, woman-hating bilge.
You do agree that we are responsible for evaluating propaganda as we see fit? This is not a scenario out of A Clockwork Orange, is it?
This IS a war of ideas, abstract concepts relentlessly pounded into people's sensoriums via propaganda, rallies, flag waving, rants, leaflets, door knocking campaigns, stump speeches by campaign surrogates, but people pick sides or ignore the whole damn buzzing confusion.
It's ludicrous to play reductionistic games that remove all agency from those who hear the propaganda, attend the rallies, see people waving US and Trump logo flags, and so on.
It makes zero sense to blame CNN and/or Zucker --- how could his journalists cover the events with a shred of objectivity if they became the left-progressive equivalent of Fox News in that regard? --- or Putin and the Internet Research Agency, whose meddling was largely ineffectual. The voter's choices are their own.
The citizens are not marionettes with sinister people controlling them. They're not robots in any meaningful sense; no, they are conscious, willing agents, for whose voting decisions they are every bit as responsible as, for example, drivers in traffic who speed at 50 miles per hour over the legal limit, individuals who commit violent crimes, someone who buys a whisky rather than lemonade, or a crook who forges signatures on stolen checks.
The reverse of that is too easy on them, refuses to allow for some form of metanoia on their part, and renders us far too condescending as well.
NO ONE forced any of Trump's voters to take his rallies and rants seriously, least of all the mass media with free publicity. Those televised events were just as much an opportunity to adjudge Trump as unfit to serve for multiple reasons, surely? There was plenty of critical commentary available, and it was up to the voters to take the process seriously enough to seek some of it out.
Maybe we have different background assumptions about human behavior. I am holding the voters individually accountable, that's all. Correct me if I am misrepresenting your theory, but you seem to think just viewing a neo-fascist pageant must inevitably overwhelm one's reason and ability to choose, and I reject that. The Trump cult owns their decisions, otherwise, you are essentially supplying them with a kind of "diminished capacity" defense for voting for him or anyone else on the ballot! "We didn't know," said the Germans after May 8, 1945. "We were not responsible for Hitler. We were powerless."
The Devil of mass media propaganda made me/you/them do it, really?
From TV talking head at The Tower: "twelve motorcars containing Donald Trump" will be leaving for the courthouse soon. Eleven of them, I am sure, will hold his "id."
It's fun to see the Dumpster's rage (and accompanying stress) continue to build. I'm still hoping the stress will result in cardiac arrest. By the way, if the judge levies a gag order on the participants, won't that limit how much the Dumpster can say on TV and social media? That could add even MORE stress, right?!
Maybe the stress will bring on the massive crippling stroke I've been hoping he'll have for years, leaving him unable to speak or post as he watches his world crumble around him: Melanoma takes up with some young stud, Donald Jr does too much blow and picks up a hot transsexual who films him getting [insert your selected depravity here], Ivanka's fake boobs explode, and Barron comes out as gay.
No, I don't. If a gag order is levied, he will continue to talk/text unless & until the judge actually enforces his order by whatever means he chooses. I'm counting on the Dumpster to blab on & on until he's tossed into jail. This judge seems to be pretty serious about this stuff.
Issuing a gag order would be meaningless unless there are consequences invoked for disregarding such an order. Unless the judge intends to toss trump in prison or strip him of all means of communication with his base of followers, there isn’t very much that can be done to enforce a gag order on trump, who needs social media like a junkie needs his next fix. As my old man used to say, rules and laws are only as good as their enforcement…
What strikes me is that Trump sounds like a man off his meds. I've dealt with people like this on the other side as a lawyer, and it never goes well for them in the end because they're all bluster and multi-paragraph email, text, and voicemail accusations against their ex, me, and the system in general until they get in front of the judge, where they have nothing to say because even nuts know that if you word-vomit that crap in court a judge is putting you in the pokey overnight to calm down. I'm watching the current proceedings with keen interest and a lot of popcorn. I don't anticipate getting a lot of work done today.
His meds, as I understand it, are Adderall.
Trump has a LONG history of misusing a concoction of amphetamines, which he covered up by hiring a pseudo doc, Sean Connelly while in office. Dr. Connelly is an ER doc--someone trained to handle acute episodes or injury. It would have been more appropriate if tRump had someone with an internal medicine background, but none of those guys would allow the continued self-medicating that tRump does for his, so-called “low energy” that he likes to mock in other people.
Was that the doctor who was alcoholic, and who gave uppers to anyone in the White House wanting them? Anyway, the person is now a Congressman from Texas -- in the mode of Louie Gohmert.
I believe that's (now Rep.) Ronny Jackson, but the other details you described have been reported before.
https://dctribune.org/unearthed-story-that-newsweek-killed-reveals-trumps-medical-records-show-addiction-to-drugs/
Check out this link
Far more details and a very plausible timeline of Trump's likely habituation to what amounts to "speed."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRqOoo53kUk
^^^^^^
Ten Years After: Speed Kills
with a cheeseburger for a chaser . . .
the Adderall (and anti-herpes meds) are a matter of common knowledge. but I'm sure there are others. just because he SAYS he doesn't take drugs doesn't make it true. I'm sure there are benzos in the mix, since a little too much Adderall will make you act like...well, like TFF.
https://dctribune.org/unearthed-story-that-newsweek-killed-reveals-trumps-medical-records-show-addiction-to-drugs/
Good work.
I just vaguely remember an article by a journalist who uncovered the specific drugs back before tRump took office. He and a quack doctor had a long relationship . . .
You are right, now that you mention it. And Trump wrote his own health record ("Perfect!!!" if I recall correctly).
It's been said that he and his namesake do a little blow.
https://dctribune.org/unearthed-story-that-newsweek-killed-reveals-trumps-medical-records-show-addiction-to-drugs/
I thought it might be tertiary syphilis, maybe syphilis incorrect treated sub rosa by some dubious medico Trump used to avoid scrutiny. This speed or diet drug uppers
explanation is much more plausible.
Now a days, it’s hard to have a long term history of syphilis because of the screening whenever there is a hospital admission. In tertiary syphilis, you’d also expect to see weird motor symptoms--remember how Hitler was said to “dance” erratically with emotional bursts? He had tertiary syphilis . . . There’s a great book: “POX: Genius, madness and the mysteries of syphilis” by Deborah Hayden. Recently, forensic DNA on Beethoven suggested various maladies, never mentioning syphilis. I think that was a major overlook. Even now, no one wants to consider it because it is a STD. BTW--it’s on the rise again.
Yeah I figured after his presidential physicals, the theory failed, but otherwise, it would explain the behavior very well. And he does have weird motor symptoms, maybe not as extreme as in actual TS cases, though.
And it is on the rise again, that gets reported from time to time in the mainstream media. Statistics for any STD broken down by age cohorts and other factors have to be taken into account, plus the relentless Republican war on sex educations and public health in general.
They take something already a really serious problem and essentially organize to make it worse, it's beyond belief.
One word. SOCIOPATH! Maybe two. PSYCHOPATH!
Let's mash up the two: Psychosociopath.
His network should be renamed Psychosocial like the song from the arguably terrible Iowa band slipknot
Offhand the best Iowa musician of the last thirty years is Greg Brown. There are terrible (or just so mediocre you cringe) bands all over, but slipknot might be one of the worst mediocre examples.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI_VkjbBLXo
^^^^ "Trump Can't Have That" --- Greg Brown
😉👍🏻😂
Good term for someone so unique. I'm not a doctor, but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn!
It's mainly narcissism. (In his case, as bad as it gets.) It's not that he can't tell good from evil - in his mind, he's good, and anyone who disputes that is evil.
Does it matter? He is severely sick in the head and Yet! That’s a-okay for Repug voters. Same, too, with MTG, Matt Gaetz and others.
The syndromes and etiology of the pathology matter, for treatment of people open to therapy, as understood by their therapists etc.
That rules out Herr Gropenfuehrer, naturally!
Ten years from now, younger people just hitting their teens are not going to believe the history of the years since that (#@!&$!) came down the elevator stalking the American landscape, casting evil spells he doesn't comprehend, and managing to postpone even the beginning of his legal reckoning until 2023.
I know, I should be working but I'm just so distracted. Let's both get back to work, ok? Note to self: Get Back to Work.
Old lawyers will tell you that when you have the law on your side, argue the law, when you have the facts on your side, argue the facts, and when you don't have either the law or the facts pound on the table. This must be what you do when you don't have the law, the facts or a table. Good to know.
I think you nailed it, right there. He's cornered, he's scared, and he's got nothing but a keyboard to pound on.
That has always been true, and always will be.
As he did yesterday on Hannity, the more he runs his mouth, or his tiny fingers on "Truth Social", the more likely he is to convict himself.
From your lips...etc.
I’m not a doctor, but Trump seems to be suffering from “<fill in the blank>”.
I'd say he's got a bad case, too!
Tertiary syphilis?
Headline: Florida Man Awaiting NY Indictment Throws Toddler Tantrum Online
He's such a poo pee kaka. About four years old.
My son at age four was a better and smarter human being, as are most four year olds, except those who have been severely emotionally abused. Dumpster never healed from massive emotional trauma around age two when his mother became ill and completely withdrew from his care for about a year IIRC, and his harsh, belligerant sociopath father and assorted household help became his alternately abusive, unreliable, and absent caregivers. Mary Trump's book lays it all out. He was severely traumatized at a very early age when humans are normally forming basic elements of personality, self image, relationships with others, and understanding of the world. All these things are wreckage in Dumpster's case. The rest of his growing up time must have been spent trying to become enough of a "killer" to please his un-pleasable father, and enough of a facsimile of an adult to be able to minimally function socially.
My armchair theory with no psychology training beyond 101 and many self-help books, plus observation of some of the people in my own family, is that children who experience severe emotional trauma and get no help to heal that trauma "freeze in place" in their emotional development, at whatever age the trauma happens, because all their attention is diverted to surviving and constructing whatever defenses they can cobble together. Any emotional and intellectual development after unhealed childhood trauma just thinly papers over the damage and of necessity incorporates the dysfunctional coping mechanisms the child must develop to survive. Trump is an especially pathetic and damaged example.
If you read Mary Trump's book about his upbringing, the word "sociopath" is pretty much the apt description of the entire damn family.
It's just beyond understanding. His father was a martinet asshole and his mother was a zombie. No wonder he has problems.
And what does it say about the crazies who continue to support him?
I think they identify either with the personality of anger, grievance, victimhood, and evasion of responsibility that he consciously displays, and the blustery, bullying, big-ego he compensates with, or the "I am a broken survivor of severe trauma" vibe that he can't help but exude.
Also Herr Gropenfuehrer demonizes entire groups his rabid base disdains: racial minorities, women, and especially intellectual women with careers (AOC hits that trifecta), the disabled, foreign "invaders" from Mexico, China, Central America, etc. Also the fear and loathing that underlies his anti-intellectual bloviating incoherence is something they can get behind, as well as demonizing "global elites," George Soros (code word for `Jews' and other `rootless cosmopolitans') - that's the short list, I am sure it leaves out plenty of other targets.
Just typing that is sending me back to the anti-gravity inversion table and some jazz piano from Errol Garner, as the late Howard Cosell once put it, "It's just not HUMAN!"
He is also a low IQ, barely functional and essentially illiterate. Not much there for scrapping together a coherent ego.
But he has words, the best words! A genius, a very stable genius, mind you!
Wow! There are a lot of Trump hating wives floating around.
Including at least one of his very own. I wonder if she still has that "I Don't Care" coat.
Melania certainly hasn't come out as a visible support for her husband.
I am surprised she hasn't filed for divorce already. She'd better soon or she won't get a dime from the new and improved prenup she reportedly negotiated after he was elected and she stayed in NYC. As we all either know or suspect, the tRump Org is a financial house of cards bound to collapse soon.
I bet it’s filed, just not served...yet.
when has she ever? she obviously HATES him. as do his kids...it's just a matter of time.
I saw a picture in which she was wearing it the other day...
Perhaps it's actually a message for hubby.
Trump is pathetic. It still boggles my mind that he was elected POTUS. His tantrums are like an 8 year old's. Funny how MTG is learning about how the cow ate the cabbage on the streets of Manhattan. Not quite what you see inside the bubble, is it hon'?
Stumped me.
You too? See http://www.word-detective.com/2010/01/how-the-cow-ate-the-cabbage/
It's funny. Thanks, Michael.
...and now I know the rest of the story. I picked up the phrase while working for the railroad in California in the late 70's.
excellent! I now have a new expression. thanks, guys.
Thank you for the link, difny. I will now read up on it. I, too, was stumped. But wasn't it MTG who talked about a "peach tree dish"? She is dumb as a rock--my apologies to rocks.
peach tree dish? Oh, and Hitler's police, the gazpacho. Norm Crosby reincarnated.
I adore hearing her talking about the gazpacho with such earnest outrage. Delicious.
Very cold-hearted, that gazpacho.
haaahahaha!
Another laugh!
She's sort of our new Dan Quayle :-D
Thanks, Elizabeth. I needed that laugh. I had to read peach tree dish three times before I got it. ganGreene being from Georgia, I was thinking some local dessert.
Gonna work that good one into my writing soon.
Michael L. I have an eight year old grandson who can argue his point so well I’ve told him he should become a lawyer, but he’s never started blaming everyone else and their mothers too! Lol! He’s only eight and he admits his mistakes, but argues the reasons forever.😁
I would encourage his debating skills. Sounds like he represents the 8 year old cohort very well; much better than tRump.
So true!
Sounds like a lawyer in training. Be careful, he might have people locked up before he's 18..and defend himself in front of a judge, getting a case done..
Good lawyers are born, not made. That's what law school is for..
A cornered, rabid rat has more dignity.
Apparently liddle Marjie tweeted that the counter protesters were making so much noise they should be charged with "assault". ROFL
The fragility of these people's egos is constantly on offer.
What is Trump’s fixation on prosecutors’ wives? He writes about them almost as much as he writes about Rosie O’Donnell.
It would take Wilhelm Reich to explain that one plausibly, maybe a team of shrinks with Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and to provide an alternate theory, B.F. Skinner, just to keep the rest of the on their toes and rooting the explanations in empirical facts as much as possible.
Trump will stump psychologists for the next hundred years or more. And the youth of American not yet born are going be freaked out to learn this or that living relative or deceased ancestor voted for him TWICE!
I can say with absolute certainty that not a single member of my extended family voted for Drumpf.
It's projection.
Wow! Just keep digging yourself in deeper Donald. You’re doing a fine job of convicting yourself.
Theory: there's a deep self-loathing and drive to self-destruction in that guy. His rabid base would deny that categorically, but even so...
This is so over-the-top unhinged I'm speechless. Well, for now.
It will only get worse.
It certainly will, as it should.
Right now, Trump is a sideshow. A very grave threat to democracy is happening in Wisconsin, with pretty much everything riding on today’s Supreme Court election. Heather Cox Richardson lays it out in frightening detail.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-2-2023-sunday
Also important to cover what DeathSantis is doing in Florida, with permitless carry and 6-week abortion signed yesterday - and arresting peaceful protesters, including the FL Senate Democratic leader, Lauren Book, and the former FL Commissioner of Agriculture and gubernatorial candidate, Nikki Fried. And the huge student walkouts and protests in Nashville over gun laws, as well as GOP efforts there to kick out Democratic legislators who stood with the protesters. Trump's potential liability for the NYC indictment is nothing in importance compared to those matters, or the other potential charges against him on the insurrection and the classified documents.
Perspective - the media needs to get some. We have a country sliding ever so slowly into facsism, state by state.
Wish the Mainstream Media wasn't doing wall-to-wall coverage: Trump motorcade from Mar a Lardo to airport; Trump Farce One jet taking off; landing at Teterboro; Lardo arriving at the Rump Tower... etc. etc. Yes, there are more important things.
The free publicity the mainstream media supplied in 2016 and 2020 was priceless, didn't work on the second go round because we had all seen enough by then, apart from the cultists.
In point of fact, the coverage isn’t priceless; the vale has been calculated. In 2016, Trump had $5 billion worth of “earned” (I.e. unpaid) media exposure, much of it CNN’s slavish and uncritical live coverage of his rallies. Jeff Zucker, then head of CNN, is more responsible for the Trump presidency than Vladimir Putin.
Yes, in terms of dollars you can calculate it; in terms of the ideological effect: priceless. It offers each voter the option to value it as they please --- as an inspiring, patriotic message, or preposterous, reactionary, racist, woman-hating bilge.
You do agree that we are responsible for evaluating propaganda as we see fit? This is not a scenario out of A Clockwork Orange, is it?
This IS a war of ideas, abstract concepts relentlessly pounded into people's sensoriums via propaganda, rallies, flag waving, rants, leaflets, door knocking campaigns, stump speeches by campaign surrogates, but people pick sides or ignore the whole damn buzzing confusion.
It's ludicrous to play reductionistic games that remove all agency from those who hear the propaganda, attend the rallies, see people waving US and Trump logo flags, and so on.
It makes zero sense to blame CNN and/or Zucker --- how could his journalists cover the events with a shred of objectivity if they became the left-progressive equivalent of Fox News in that regard? --- or Putin and the Internet Research Agency, whose meddling was largely ineffectual. The voter's choices are their own.
The citizens are not marionettes with sinister people controlling them. They're not robots in any meaningful sense; no, they are conscious, willing agents, for whose voting decisions they are every bit as responsible as, for example, drivers in traffic who speed at 50 miles per hour over the legal limit, individuals who commit violent crimes, someone who buys a whisky rather than lemonade, or a crook who forges signatures on stolen checks.
The reverse of that is too easy on them, refuses to allow for some form of metanoia on their part, and renders us far too condescending as well.
NO ONE forced any of Trump's voters to take his rallies and rants seriously, least of all the mass media with free publicity. Those televised events were just as much an opportunity to adjudge Trump as unfit to serve for multiple reasons, surely? There was plenty of critical commentary available, and it was up to the voters to take the process seriously enough to seek some of it out.
Maybe we have different background assumptions about human behavior. I am holding the voters individually accountable, that's all. Correct me if I am misrepresenting your theory, but you seem to think just viewing a neo-fascist pageant must inevitably overwhelm one's reason and ability to choose, and I reject that. The Trump cult owns their decisions, otherwise, you are essentially supplying them with a kind of "diminished capacity" defense for voting for him or anyone else on the ballot! "We didn't know," said the Germans after May 8, 1945. "We were not responsible for Hitler. We were powerless."
The Devil of mass media propaganda made me/you/them do it, really?
From TV talking head at The Tower: "twelve motorcars containing Donald Trump" will be leaving for the courthouse soon. Eleven of them, I am sure, will hold his "id."
It's fun to see the Dumpster's rage (and accompanying stress) continue to build. I'm still hoping the stress will result in cardiac arrest. By the way, if the judge levies a gag order on the participants, won't that limit how much the Dumpster can say on TV and social media? That could add even MORE stress, right?!
Maybe the stress will bring on the massive crippling stroke I've been hoping he'll have for years, leaving him unable to speak or post as he watches his world crumble around him: Melanoma takes up with some young stud, Donald Jr does too much blow and picks up a hot transsexual who films him getting [insert your selected depravity here], Ivanka's fake boobs explode, and Barron comes out as gay.
Actually, can we have Barron transition?
Do you really think a gag order will stop Drumpf?
No, I don't. If a gag order is levied, he will continue to talk/text unless & until the judge actually enforces his order by whatever means he chooses. I'm counting on the Dumpster to blab on & on until he's tossed into jail. This judge seems to be pretty serious about this stuff.
OOPsie! Trump made another spelling error - he meant that Bragg needs to be indicated.
Issuing a gag order would be meaningless unless there are consequences invoked for disregarding such an order. Unless the judge intends to toss trump in prison or strip him of all means of communication with his base of followers, there isn’t very much that can be done to enforce a gag order on trump, who needs social media like a junkie needs his next fix. As my old man used to say, rules and laws are only as good as their enforcement…
The first thing I learned when my oldest child turned two;
Pick your battles.