I have been overwhelmed these past few days by the
unbridgeable gap between what I have to say about Marx and the amount of time I
have to say it in the course Todd Gitlin and I are teaching. Even so, I have been paying attention to the
news, so herewith a few idle observations.
But first, yet another confession.
I actually did not know what a sharpie is until last week.
My principal reaction to the altered weather map was that it
was such a manifestly, transparently, embarrassingly childish act on Trump’s
part that it bespoke a degree of mental deterioration that even I had previously
not attributed to him. What on earth did
his addled brain think he was doing? But
I was much cheered by the fiasco because it makes Trump a laughing stock, which
is just exactly what we want as the election draws closer. [By the way, look up the etymology of fiasco.
Like that of baroque it is fascinating.] Equally revealing was the fact that the
White House staff, or what is left of it, was unable to stop Trump from making
a total fool of himself.
Here at Carolina Meadows there is a special unit in the
Assisted Living wing for residents who are suffering from dementia. The Assisted Living wing is called The
Fairways, and the Dementia unit is called the Greens, because they are adjacent
to the golf course that wends its way through the Carolina Meadows grounds. Perhaps Trump could be persuaded to sign
himself in with the understanding that he would have dibs on tee times.
Serena plays for the title this afternoon. Fingers crossed.
4 comments:
Kevin Drum, who blogs on Mother Jones, said that Trump, in the Sharpie incident, was going full “Queeg.” He was referring to Captain Queeg in Herman Wouk’s “Caine Mutiny”--the complete denial of any mistake, even a trivial one, combined with an obsessive need to justify his behavior. A normal person, when it was pointed out that Alabama was not in danger, would have said something like “Oops I made a mistake. I’m glad the people of Alabama are safe.” And then go on to urge those in the path of the hurricane to take all precautions they could. To use the technical term, the man is “nuts” and it puts the country in danger to have someone like that in charge of nuclear weapons.
Speaking of being in the path of the hurricane, I believe you’re far enough inland to avoid the worst.
I hate technical terms like, "nuts". Trump, in more conventional terms, is a pathological liar and a delusional narcissist. Such is irony in the age of Trump.
He is all of those things in more. "Nuts" is just an easy shortcut.
Was his behavior evidence of a deterioration of mental faculties, or was it an expression of his "normal" pathological narcissism? His narcissism compels him to always be perceived as right. When confronted about something that is provably wrong, he still must defend himself and insist as often as he must that he was right. His continued tweeting about this evidences the power of his compulsion to protect a fragile ego.
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