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.
Yesterday's blog:
Recent blogs:
