October 2, 2024

"On the initiative of the vice president" should be on the top of the page story today, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

Why is this man laughing?


Image of laughing Vance from Perchance Photo AI

Unfortunately you need a subscription to read this entire Washington Post article:


The major coverage on the WaPo website was the Vance-Walz debate:


On your computer you had to scroll past a couple of ads and even the Better Living section to find the article "Trump mixes up words, swerves among subjects in off-topic speech" (bottom left):

If RawStory hadn't summarized it (here) it was so far the WaPo website page I probably would have missed it.

The (subscription) NY Times also covered this story: 

In a Pair of Disjointed Events, Trump Talks Gaza, Migrants and ‘Full Metal Jacket’

President Donald J. Trump criticized President Biden’s leadership and insisted again he would have prevented the crisis in the Middle East had he won in 2020.


RawStory barely scratches the surface in their summary of The Washington Post article. 

Here are some of the excerpts they left out:

“I think I’m booked every single day for 33 days,” he said at the end of the news conference, incorrectly citing the number of days until the election, which is 35. “I’ve worked for 17 or 18 days when you say in a row, and I’m working even when I’m not working.”


Trump was more energetic during a speech to supporters in Waunakee, Wis., earlier Tuesday. He went on an extended riff about the 1987 film “Full Metal Jacket” and made up a false claim that Harris raised taxes as the San Francisco district attorney, which is not a power of that office. 

"Full Metal Jacket" I wondered, what the hell was he talking about about. I looked it up and found the following: 

'What Are You Babbling About?' Jimmy Kimmel Spots Trump Going 'Full Mental' In Real Time in HuffPost. It included a video clip of this part of his speech:


Here's another excerpt from The Washington Post article:


“They come from, from the Congo in Africa,” Trump said at the event at Discovery World, a science and technology museum a couple of miles from where the Republican National Convention was held in July. “Many people from the Congo. I don’t know what that is.”

Trump elaborated on his proposal to eliminate the Department of Education by describing what he envisioned the agency would look like: “I think you will have like one person plus a secretary. You’ll have a secretary. The secretary will have one person plus a secretary. And all the person has to do is: Are you teaching English? Are you teaching arithmetic? What are you doing? Reading, writing and arithmetic. And are you not teaching woke? Not teaching woke is a very big factor. But we’ll have a very small staff.” 


This all relates to J.D. Vance because it is a reminder that should Trump win he would be a Trump brain-fart leading to an undeniable descent into dementia, or a life threatening or life ending medical event, from becoming president.

I have no doubt, nor should you, that J.D. Vance is very well aware that if Trump wins he may not serve out his term and that he will end up as president. 

Vance is also aware that the vice president is the only member of the Executive Branch that can't be fired. However, he probably can recite every word of the 25th Amendment since in essence it says that the vice president can fire the president. I bet his internet search history shows many clicks on this Wikipedia link.

I bet he has it printed out with this one line highlighted (click image to enlarge):


Vance knows first hand that Trump's mental condition is deteriorating. He knows that the vice president has the ceremonial role of certifying an election, but he knows that his role in beginning the process of enacting the 25th Amendment is anything but ceremonial. 

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October 1, 2024

Vance doesn't project the villainy vibe that Trump does, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

 

To be a popular villain in fiction a character has to express their villainy with panache. Trump is a master of doing this, from floating the idea of putting alligators in the Rio Grande or shooting immigrants trying to cross the border in the legs to, just the other day, talking about having one day when police can round up criminals without the usual retraints on using violence against them.

Here's his latest crowd pleasing suggestion:

Trump's call for police to have a 'Purge'-like day is an authoritarian strategy.


Excerpt:

In the 2013 dystopian thriller "The Purge," America observes a tradition wherein, once a year for a designated 12-hour period, all crime is permissible — up to and including murder. During the purge, society is rocked by spectacular violence, which is said to have a cathartic effect: It dramatically reduces crime and unemployment. "The Purge" provides audiences with a warning about the horrifying consequences of selective observation of morals and a world ruled by a "might makes right" ethos. But at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday, former President Donald Trump effectively floated the idea as a good thing. Except in his spinoff version, the twist is that it’s only the cops who get to do what they want. 

Poor J.D. Vance tries to pull off this kind of unabashedly evil persona, but he just can't manage it. Trump, with his sing-songy voice and the hold he has on his audience, manages it. Perhaps this works because he is able to use that modulated voice the way hypnotists use theirs to put subjects in a trance.

I suppose we can excuse Vance for seeming to be a Trump Mini-Me. 

Trump has been acting for decades. Vance is on the big stage now, but he has barely the skill for a small role in a community theater performance. If his best lines are about cat ladies and people eating pets he can't even deliver them well.

Tonight in the debate he has one last chance to prove his acting chops. He will have to do this debating someone who isn't going to be mouthing lines from a script written by lunatics.

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September 30, 2024

There's shtick, there sick, there's sick shtick, and there's sick and insane sociopathic shtick. By Hal M. Brown, MSW

 


Consider the meaning of these two words:

sick1 | sik | adjective 1 affected by physical or mental illness: nursing very sick children | (the sick as plural noun) :  visiting the sick and the elderly | we were sick with bronchitis. • relating to those who are ill: the company organized a sick fund for its workers. • (of an organization, system, or society) suffering from serious problems, especially of a financial nature: their economy remains sick. 2 [predicative] feeling nauseous and wanting to vomit: he was starting to feel sick | Mark felt sick with fear. • [attributive] (of an emotion) so intense as to cause one to feel unwell or nauseous: he had a sick fear of returning. • informal disappointed, mortified, or miserable: he looked pretty sick at that, but he eventually agreed. • archaic pining or longing for someone or something: he was sick for a sight of her. 3 (sick of) [predicative] intensely annoyed with or bored by (someone or something) as a result of having had too much of them: I'm absolutely sick of your moods. 4 (especially of humor) having something unpleasant such as death, illness, or misfortune as its subject and dealing with it in an offensive way: this was someone's idea of a sick joke. • (of a person) having abnormal or unnatural tendencies; perverted: he is a deeply sick man from whom society needs to be protected. 5 informal very good; excellent: it was a sick party and there were tons of cool people there. 

shtick | SHtik | (also schtick) 

noun informala gimmick, comic routine, style of performance, etc. associated with a particular person: there are many great comics who have based their stand-up shtick on observational comedy | her shtick was to haul out her pet ferret.• a person's special talent, interest, or area of activity: movies about ordinary women who do extraordinary things—that's my shtick.

Here's a more detailed definition of shtick. a word that is derived from the Yiddish word schtik .

Plain old shtick is a type of humor. Preface the word shtick with the word sick and we have a number of possible meanings, some good, some bad, and one very, very bad. Sick shtick humor can be good as in the example above meaning excellent or cool.  

Also related to humor as described above, it can be something unpleasant.

Trump engages in shtick in the formal sense of the word. His performances are a combined gimmick and a comic routine, but it is more than that. It is sick but not in a good or cool way, although I am certain he would disagree and most of his MAGA cult members would also disagree.

In fact, his shtick is sick in the very worst way. It is vicious and vomitous. It is also sick sick because it is coming from a person who is mentally sick.  

Trump's sickness has been decribed many times by his critics, some mental health professionals including his niece psychologist Mary Trump, the founder of the Duty to Warn group Dr. John Gartner, psychoanalyst Lance Dodes, MD, and myself, as well as some savvy amateur psychologists like George Conway who started the Anti-Psychopath PAC and Charlie Sykes (read his opnion here about Trump's "gibbering nonsense" here). There's no reason to further elaborate on this topic here.

If you follow the news on progressive media like HuffPost and RawStory you'll see stories like these just from this morning (click image to enlarge):


Trump wanting to implement Project 2025 and what this will mean for the country is only just starting to get major media coverage, but the exponentially growing evidence that Trump's cognitive decline and lapse into clinical delusional and sociopathic mania is still barely a major story and the coverage it does receive is mostly relegated to progressive media. 

More: 



The likelihood of Trump dying in office should make everyone voting for him realize that they are very possibly voting for J.D. Vance, who is clinically sane unless you consider the sociopathic personality disorder a form of insanity, to be president within four years. Vance, like Trump, fits most of the crtieria for being a sociopath (I won't spell it out why I say this when you can easily click this link). However, Trump is an unstable or insane sociopath. Vance is a stable or sane sociopath.

The Vance shtick isn't as flamboyant as the Trump shtick, but shtick it is because it is a gimmicky performance. One might say all politicians engage in shtick to some extent including Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I can agree with this only if one says that it is a matter of degree. Harris and Walz avoid shtick and Trump and Vance revel in it and use it to manipulate their audience with lies and distortions.





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September 29, 2024

I hope these two articles are right but I am still scared. How scared am I and how scared are you? By Hal M. Brown, MSW

Image by Perchance AI Photos

I was perusing the internet this morning and among the first few articles that caught my attention there were two that gave me some guarded feelings of optimism. Still, I am scared. How scared am I? There's one English idiom that some may consider vulgar but it describes better than any I can think of: I am almost, but not quite literally


The first article was:

Will Trump try to end democracy? Yes — but these scholars claim he can't pull it off


The second article was:




Like millions of Americans I am almost, but not quite literally, scared shitless. Consider this video:


I wrote the other day (here ) about how words often fail to describe feelings.  

"Adding together what may become of the United States under Trump and what may happen in Israel there aren't words to describe the horror"

The evocative phase "scared shitless" comes close as long as it isn't used casually and you think of the times you had really bad diarrhea.

The two articles I cite address different situations but both offer an optimistic take. The first suggests that even if Trump wins democracy is not doomed. It explains how it may survive despite Trump and his MAGA minions attempts to dismantle and destroy it. The second, by former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb (one of the well known political mustache men), explains that if Trump loses the election he is likely to fail in his legal efforts to overturn the results.

People handle the possiblity of impending doom differently. Some engage in denial and avoidance. They just manage to turn off bad thoughts. They don't follow the news and try not to associate with people who want to talk about it. 

With the exception of thrill seeking junkies like sky divers and bungee jumpers most people don't seek out anxiety. Some avoid anything that provides it and other develop mechanisms to deal with things that trigger it.

Others are like me. While I let myself dwell on worse case scenarios I manage not to become overwhelmed by my fears. I think that no matter what happens poltically I and both those I love and other like-minded people will survive. If the worst comes to pass I will do what I can to fight the good fight. I will give emotional support to my friends. I will participate in the protests described in the first article. I will write my blogs. I will donate to pro-democracy causes.

In the meantime, when my anxiety provoking thoughts threaten to overwhelm me I am able to distract myself and put them out of my mind and I do and think about pleasant things.

Unfortunately others through no fault of their own can't strike this balance or have a lot of trouble doing this. They feel swamped by worry and anxiety. Sometimes this is to the point that it effects them physically and their health is jeopardized. Insomnia, eating too much or too little, overdoing alcohol or drugs, experiencing debilitating depression or anxiety are examples of what can happen. To get back to how I began this blog, they can literally have digestive problems.


Recent blogs:

It can happen here, right? RIGHT!!! Start by asking what kind of monsters put children in cages and go from there. By Hal M. Brown, MSW

Let's say the new $100,000 Trump watch is worth $100,000, why the hell does Trump think it is a good idea to sell it now? By Hal M. Brown, MSW



Read all blogs here.








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September 28, 2024

It can happen here, right? RIGHT!!! Start by asking what kind of monsters put children in cages and go from there. By Hal M. Brown, MSW

 


Thinking of this, which I often do, evokes a feeling of horrow beyond words. I see in my mind the well known photos of the the entrance to Auschwitz. (Photos and captions from Wikipedia)

Above: A doctor, center, with the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army, walks with a group of survivors at the entrance to the newly liberated Auschwitz I concentration camp in January 1945. The Red Army liberated the camp on January 27, 1945. Above the gate is the motto "Arbeit macht frei," which translates to "Work sets you free."

I think of pictures like these:

Above: Jews are deported from Würzburg, 25 April 1942. Deportation occurred in public and was witnessed by many Germans.

Below: I think of Heinrich Himmler (second left)  visiting Auschwitz where he witnessed the gassing of Jews:


I think of these happy looking NAZI officers:

Who are they? The are three SS officers socializing on the grounds of the SS retreat outside of Auschwitz, at “Solahütte”, 1944. From left to right they are: Richard Baer (Commandant of Auschwitz), Dr. Josef Mengele and Rudolf Hoess (the former Auschwitz Commandant).

I was think of trying to write about this as I fell asleep last night. This morning I read this essay by S.V. Date who is the senior White House correspondent for HuffPost (bio). The article says much of what I planned to write about.

It Can’t Happen Here, Right? RIGHT???

Jan. 6... Terminating the Constitution... Rounding up 21 million people.... America, we’ve got some bad news.
It begins:

Nine decades later, that “it” is also what dozens of Republican donors, campaign consultants, pollsters and others interviewed by HuffPost say cannot possibly happen. They scoff at any analogy between former President Donald Trump, a man they support with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and the infamous dictators of the past. They insist that worries about Trump remaking the country as an autocracy are overwrought and designed solely to keep a Democrat in the White House.

“This will be a short period in history and we will swing right back to the middle,” said Hugh Culverhouse, a Miami lawyer who so far has given $500,000 toward Trump’s reelection effort.

While authoritarianism experts and democracy advocates hope Culverhouse is right, they worry – deeply – that he is not.

It is, of course, impossible to know for certain what a second Trump presidency might bring or whether, should he manage to seize absolute power, his rule would come anywhere close to the depravity of the tyrants of the last century.

Still, no other presidential nominee in United States history has behaved with the contempt for democracy that Trump has already demonstrated or even hinted at the sorts of autocratic actions Trump promises if he is returned to power. 

Could the predictions laid out in this article come to pass if Trump wins? Consider this Axios article:

Excerpt: 

Former President Trump, if elected, would build a Cabinet and White House staff based mainly on two imperatives: pre-vetted loyalty to him and a commitment to stretch legal and governance boundaries, sources who talk often with the leading GOP presidential candidate tell Axios.

Why it matters: Trump would fill the most powerful jobs in government with men like Stephen Miller, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Kash Patel — with the possible return of Steve Bannon. If Trump won in 2024, he'd turn to loyalists who share his zeal to punish critics, purge non-believers, and take controversial legal and military action, the sources tell us.

Trump and his prospective top officials don't mince words about their plans:

Hitler had his inner circle of 10 top lieutenants including Himmler, Göring, Goebbels, Bormann, and Speer, and Trump will have others you've heard of and others who are just as evil who most of you aren't familair with. 

Is there be a difference between them?

You say tomato, I say tomahto... let's hope the title and verse from the song holds true for the United States: 


Addendum:

Do Trump and his MAGA minions who want a lily white colored Christian country welcome the following people?

There were about 47.8 million immigrants in 2023. This represents approximately 14.3% of the population, or about 1 in 7 residents in the United States. Immigrants are defined as foreign-born residents. As of 2022 there were nearly 731,000 Haitian immigrants residing in the United States, comprising the country's 15th largest foreign-born population. There are about 3.5 million Muslims residing in the United States.


The pale skinned MAGAs may put up with Jews, Black, and Asian people being part of society, but clearly they would like to see the others disappear.












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"On the initiative of the vice president" should be on the top of the page story today, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

Why is this man laughing? Image of laughing Vance from Perchance Photo AI Unfortunately you need a subscription to read this entire Washing...