Like a lot of progressives, I've always clung to the happy thought that Donald Trump would go crazy before I did.
It seemed like a no-brainer.
No President has ever disgusted so many people all over the world with his abominable ignorance, and his vulgar behaviour.
No President has scared so many people, and made them wonder to what dark place he might lead them, and how long they had to live.
So I figured it was just a matter of time before Trump cracked up, hopefully not anywhere near the nuclear button, and was carried away in a straitjacket.
So needless to say I was shocked to read this story that claims that while Trump is still standing, many decent Americans are now suffering from Trump Anxiety Disorder.
Trump and his convulsive effect on America’s national conversation are giving politics a prominence on the psychologist’s couch not seen since the months after 9/11—another moment in which events were frightening in a way that had widespread emotional consequences.
And that Trump may not be crazy, just HIMSELF...
For two years or more, commentators have been cross-referencing observations of presidential behavior with the official APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s definition of narcissistic personality disorder.
A more plausible interpretation, in the view of some psychological experts, is that Trump has been cultivating, adapting and prospering from his distinctive brand of provocation, brinkmanship and self-drama for the past 72 years. What we’re seeing is merely the president’s own definition of normal. It is only the audience that finds the performance disorienting.
In other words: He’s not crazy, but the rest of us are getting there fast.
It's not a pleasant thought, but while nobody can deny that Trump has been a massive elephant in the rooms of our lives. Who can't sympathize with this guy?
“I remember the husband basically said, ‘If you ever want to be intimate again, you’ll turn the TV off in the bedroom. I can’t have that man present and listen to him and feel any sense of arousal...’”
Or deny that sex and Trump definitely do NOT go together.
I think most progressives in American are in far better shape than the article makes them out to be. They may be tired of Trump's lies, and sick of his ugly Trump show.
Or just mentally exhausted by being forced to live in Trump's cartoon world...
But the good news is that many progressives are really, really angry...
They want revenge, the November midterms are just a few weeks away.
And of course Robert Mueller could strike at any time.
So we do have a lot to look forward to, and no time to get depressed.
And of course, for those who need a little help to imagine a brighter political future.
There's always Impeachara...
Trump is a symptom rather than a disease per se: the feverish, infected boil of decades of right-wing poisoning of the national, indeed international body politic finally coming to a head and splattering its rancid pus all over everything and everyone around it. As one variant of an old saying goes, when America catches a cold, the rest of the world develops cancer. There was a brief window of idealism and hope in the '70s in the immediate wake of Watergate and the end of Vietnam, the breaking of the chains of colonialism and the hard-fought battles of the numerous civil rights movements finally looking like they could be won. That lasted for a whopping four years -- at which time Carter became BFFs with none other than Papa Trudeau, and Willie Nelson smoked a joint on the roof of the White House as solar paneling was being installed on it. Well, the powers that be couldn't have that, now could they. It soon came crashing down in 1980 with Reagan and Thatcher and we haven't recovered since.
ReplyDeleteThe eventual collapse of the USSR didn't herald much freedom for Russia, but if anything they've gotten their revenge on the West without firing a single shot. And they were able to do so by co-opting a useless idiot like Trump along with several other determined right-wing parties and movements around the world, which had become emboldened amid the refugee crisis that itself was the result of Bush and friends kicking a hornet's nest in the Middle East so they could reap the benefits and leave everyone else to rot. Not to mention the predatory bankers' suicide mission that collapsed the global economy, the inevitable result of the unleashing of the "free market" by successive right-wing governments falling in line with the prosperity gospel of Reaganomics. Add to that the utter psychotic breakdown by a cadre of angry white Americans -- particularly white men, but some white women too, unfortunately -- over the first black American president followed by the prospect of the first female one, on top of 30+ years of being groomed for nothing but paranoia and hate by Murdoch media and AM hate radio (soon morphing into the Wild West Internet), and you've got a recipe for disaster.
Trump is merely a figurehead, but perhaps the ugliest representation of the evil that lurks in plain sight. This problem goes much deeper and won't go away simply by impeaching him. As another old saying goes, follow the money. Not just the Kochs and the other billionaires but the Cheney war machine, the oil profiteers, and the ruthless oligarchs propping up the Kremlin. Some Sunday preachers claimed on 9/11 that you could see the face of the devil in the smoke coming up from the World Trade Center. Maybe they were right: Trump himself bragged publicly as the flames were burning that his tower (wink-wink) was the bigliest in all of Lower Manhattan as a result of the Trade Towers collapsing. Perhaps it was an omen, as Trump is the grotesque visage of the four horsemen of the dark side: ignorance, fear, hatred, and GREED. It's no wonder he's driving decent people mad, because Trump is the embodiment of the million heads of chaos itself.
Hi Jackie...great comment, even if it is a depressing one. I'll never forget the day Obama was inaugurated and how hopeful I felt that the worst was behind us. And that Harper would soon be overthrown by the same forces of history. But of course Trump put an end to all that, and you're right he is just a puppet of the larger and even darker forces behind him. Still we did manage to defeat Harper, and I remain confident that the American people will eventually defeat Trump and his puppet masters. And needless to say, I live for that day...
ReplyDeleteTrump maybe crazy, but its not an unknown type of crazy. He is just all about himself and what works for him. Its just that we haven't had a President of the U.S.A. with these types of "qualities".
ReplyDeletethe Americans voted for him and now as Jean Chretien wrote in his new book, The American empire is dead". Americans killed it themselves.
Who cares who mental diseases he has, its what the American public is diagnosed with, because they are keeping him in office. With the mid terms coming up, I'm still not convinced the Democrats will have a majority in their house.