Showing posts with label Marjorie Taylor Green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marjorie Taylor Green. Show all posts

July 22, 2023

Election 2024: Silly Season or Stinky Season?




By Hal Brown

Read today's blog story on single page here.

Click above to enlarge


#sneakergate is now a hashtag on Twitter:
Click images to enlarge
They don't link to Twitter


Then there's this...

 See "Trump shares image of his minor son being used in political attack"

The two articles above caught my eye this morning. I thought how downright absurb, or silly if you will, they were. 

I suppose one way look at this is that there are some creative Trump supporters. After all, how does one turn the fact that instead of wearing sneakers meaning that President Biden is athletic they say this is proof postive he's senile? 

I'm 79 and mentally and physically fit. The four pairs of shoes I own languish in a box at the back of my closet since I rarely wear them.  In fact, I don't even own a necktie. Then again, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not president of anything. As you can see I am one of the many who have discovered HOKA shoes which I wear in warm weather whenever I don't wear sandals.


Perhaps this Rosanna_RosannaDanna, who may or may not have made the image but did post it on Truth Social, thinks they are a brilliant satirist. Whoever it is took their handle, with the name spelled not quite correctly, from the Gilda Radner SNL character. They've been on Reddit (here) for four years but never posted anything.

The youngest Trump progeny (that we know of) has been kept out of poltics (though he still makes the news on some websites like this article about how he supposedly won't tell his father he loves him). From what I've read Melania wants to insulate him from daddy's poltical world. She might not be happy that Big Daddy reposted this image on Truth Social and that this is a story being shared. Horrors upon horror, not only did it make Raw Story, but it's on my blog.

It breaks my heart that Melania might be perturbed at Donald.

As for Rosanna: what a way to get national attention! It tempts me to join Truth Social and see if I can get Trump to re-post something I put on his personal online sandbox. One might ask "Who let the cat do his business in that particular sandbox?"

These attempts to smear President Biden are all rather silly, but then we have the likes of the class-act Marjorie Taylor Greene who thought it appropriate to hold up those photos of Hunter Biden with a scantily clad woman, supposedly a prostitute, at a House committee hearing.

We already have Jim Jordan's jingoistic juggernaut, James Comer's crime confabulations, and of course the master of miserable himself, Donald J. Trump... one may ask:

For those not familiar with the reverse question mark, it means the statement is rhetorical.






May 5, 2023

According to Marjorie Taylor Greene President Biden is a senile criminal mastermind

 By Hal Brown

The Business Insider article's title, below, is correct although they define mutually exclusive incorrectly in part of their article:

Someone needs to tell MTG that Biden can't be both a criminal mastermind and completely senile


  • "The two accusations — often trotted out by the right — appear to be mutually exclusive."
  • Excerpt:
  • Someone, please tell Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that President Joe Biden can't be mentally sound enough to run an international cabal of insidious elites while also being completely senile. 

    Speaking to Kimberly Guilfoyle — a former TV anchor who's now engaged to Donald Trump Jr. — Greene claimed without substantiation that Biden is the puppet master behind a global criminal empire.

    "The true crimes are linked to Joe Biden himself. And he is the mastermind of the Biden criminal enterprise," Greene told Guilfoyle on Wednesday. "This is an international operation that has guided and steered the policy of the United States of America."

  • Let's be clear. Mutually exclusive always means that if one thing is true the other cannot be true.  Not to be overly picky but in the context used regarding Joe Biden, he's either completely senile or he's a criminal mastermind. He cannot be both. Therefore when Business Insider says he appears to be they should be saying simply that they are mutually exclusive.
  • He can't even be slightly senile and a criminal mastermind. Consider the very definition of mastermind as being a person with an outstanding intellect who is someone who plans and directs an ingenious and complex scheme or enterprise.
  • It should be noted that in January 2022 Greene called Biden a "mentally incompetent, feckless, dementia-ridden piece of crap." Now she wants everyone to think he's also a puppet master pulling the strings for "an international operation that has guided and steered the policy of the United States of America."
  • She can call him a piece of crap, which coming from her is like a cesspool disparaging a lily pond, but this is still merely a subjective opinion. Everything else she says doesn't hold up to what in Biden's behavior is readily observable.


    There is no evidence that even hints at Biden being a criminal despite the desperate attempts on the right to characterize Hunter Biden as one who was in some sort of feverish spy fantasy manner working for his father. See: Rudy and GOP MAGA maniacs in the House want to turn Hunter Biden into a master spy.


    By all evidence Biden is another kind of mastermind. He is a political mastermind. He has managed against tough odds to achieve a great deal since becoming president (here's a list). 


    Of course right-wing critics of Joe Biden won't be watching MSNBC this morning and thus probably won't learn about this jobs report:



    If Biden was a criminal he could be compared to this guy:




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January 17, 2023

GOP in center of circular firing squad

GOP in center of circular firing squad
By Hal Brown

THE TITLE of the article below SAYS FRAGILE, I'd add "fractious about to fracture" to this title, and change the photo (click to see how below) - this dark triad, this danger to democracy if they have power, fighting among themselves can only instill hope for those who fear they will bring a fascist autocracy (MAGAism and America First) to the country.

I made my own version of the photo used to illustrate the article. Click above to enlarge. Here's the meaning of Dark Triad.

Also on RAWSTORY:

'Don’t be ugly!' Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert quarrel noisily in House restroom


The article in Daily Beast is behind a paywall but you can see their illustration:

We all watched the soap opera of the fight over McCarthy's nomination to be Speaker of the House which included an actual attempted assault.

One would think that this travesty for Republicans would have taught them a lesson about public fighting and even supposedly private bathroom outbursts of acrimony.

Too bad Debbie Dingell didn't take and share a video of the so-called noisy quarrel. It was called a near-screaming match between Greene and Boebert. Classy person that she is, Dingell said "what happens in the ladies room stays in the ladies room."

Who actually reported the incident - since apparently it was't Dingell, hasn't been reported. It would be interesting to know who it was, especially if it was a Republican.

I don't see any avenue for the leaders of the GOP to remedy the situation by holding their version of the Mafia's Apalachin Meeting which was held to stop the feuding between various Mafia families. (It would have succeeded had not the police noticed all the out-of-state cars headed into a sleepy village and raided the meeting.)

The sociopaths in the Mafia knew what was best for their greater good. Not so with the sociopaths in the GOP because their narcissism overrides their good sense.

The self-defeating actions of the Republicans don't just involve individuals. For example as Thom Hartmann reports in "House Republicans are playing with fire" in Rawstory+ "the House Republican threat to crash our economy if Democrats don’t agree to gut aid to higher education, the EPA, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid... are playing with fire and appear to be blissfully ignorant of how destructive it could become." He writes:

Will this be our entre into Strauss and Howe’s “Fourth Turning”? Will House Republicans provoke a worldwide repeat of the Republican Great Depression that, history suggests, could easily lead the planet into another world war? 

Anybody who thinks cooler heads will prevail like they did in 2011 doesn’t know these Republicans. 

If they’re willing to offer excuses for Trump trying to overthrow the government of the United States, there truly are no guardrails to protect our nation from their avarice, stupidity, and willingness to destroy America for personal and political gain.

Buckle up. We’re in for a wild ride.

The term circular firing squad comes to mind thinking of what the Republican Party has devolved into. Ready, aim, fire!

_________________________

Related from Salon:

Heroes and villains: Fascists now control Congress — we can't afford to pretend otherwise


Comment below or on Facebook or on Mastodon. You can make a reply on Twitter too.

January 9, 2023

If Trump believes some of his pronouncements he may be clinically delusional

 If Trump believes some of his pronouncements he may be clinically delusional
By Hal Brown, MSW



 

I am tired of writing about Trump's psychopathology. Today's HUFFPOST story "Trump Says Biden 'Convinced' Putin To Bomb Ukraine In Mar-a-Lago Campaign Speech" prompts me to write yet another blog story about the question as to just how mentally ill the beleaguered former president might have become. 

We know he's a malignant narcissist, but how can we tell whether he is veering into becoming a delusional psychotic? 

In half of my 40 year career as a psychotherapist I worked in a community mental health center. Most of the severely mentally ill patients I worked with had been stabilized on medication so I only had a few chances to see someone exhibiting the delusions that were manifest prior to being stabilized on medications. Those times I did see patients who weren't medicated their delusions were the more typical. Several patients off medication had religious delusions and another believed a movie star was in love with him to the extent he ended up at the airport trying to board a plane without a ticket to be with his lover in Hollywood.

When a clinician does a diagnostic assessment they evaluate the patient's rational thinking and reality testing. A simple mental status exam includes the following (reference):


    • Thought process
      The flow and coherence of thoughts, inferred from a client’s observable behaviors, especially speech. For example, if the client’s speech is rambling and disorganized, the examiner may infer that their thinking is also disorganized.
    • Thought content
      Thought content can be inferred from spontaneous speech and direct questioning by the examiner. For example, the examiner might ask, “Have you ever heard things other people don’t hear or seen things other people don’t see?” An answer of “yes” to such questions raises the possibility of hallucinatory thought content.
    • Insight
      How aware is the client of their own strengths and limitations?
    • Strengths and limitations
      Traditional forms of the MSE have been designed to record any cognitive, emotional, or behavioral deficits. 
      Consider how a clinician would fill out portions of a standard mental status form like this, in particular the parts below, for Trump:


Here's more 

Delusional disorder, previously called paranoid disorder, is a type of serious mental illness called a psychotic disorder. People who have it can’t tell what’s real from what is imagined.

Delusions are the main symptom of delusional disorder. They’re unshakable beliefs in something that isn’t true or based on reality. But that doesn’t mean they’re completely unrealistic. Delusional disorder involves delusions that aren’t bizarre, having to do with situations that could happen in real life, like being followed, poisoned, deceived, conspired against, or loved from a distance. These delusions usually involve mistaken perceptions or experiences. But in reality, the situations are either not true at all or highly exaggerated. From WebMd

Perhaps Trump is already so detached from reality that any mental health professional would diagnosis him as having a psychosis. There's no way to tell how much of his pronouncements are performances and what he really believes.

Anybody who truly cares about his well-being ought to be very concerned about his lapsing into a psychotic state. Consider what you would do if you had a loved one who was expressing some of the beliefs Trump has been expressing.

Those who consider him the leader of the GOP, those cult members who blindly follow him, should also ask themselves whether they are being led by someone who is so unmoored from reality that they may be clinically delusional.

Another question which researchers could well look into is whether someone who deliberately uses gaslighting (defined as manipulating someone so as to make them question their own reality) for their own purposes can eventually gaslight themselves.

Marjorie Taylor Greene as an example of a low information and gullible person as opposed to being delusional

Just yesterday Rep. Greene addressed her pervious belief in QAnon conspiracy theories:

Wanting to believe something is different than actually believing it. Consider the poster on the wall of the X Files' Fox Mulder's office:

If someone doesn't have the ability to apply logical thinking to beliefs like those promulgated by QAnon ( including that the Clintons were responsible for murders, that the Democratic Party was responsible for a satanic child sex trafficking ring and that the California wildfires were caused by space lasers owned by a Jewish family) and gets all their information from one-sided sources they are vulnerable to being manipulated. Nobody wants to admit they were gullible and, as MTG said, that they were "sucked into" believing something that any logical person wouldn't believe.

This doesn't mean they are clinically delusional. It may suggest that they have a low IQ but above average intelligence isn't a requirement for holding public office. 

If anyone running for a major political office had to have above a 120 IQ and pass a battery of psychological tests I venture to suggest that the GOP side of the House would look very different. To the delight of Democrats, the GOP itself wouldn't be having to deal with this guy:


Update:



Anonymous 


Ben Kalom replied on this site...


Thanks for blending in criteria. This helps secure our assertions that he is not mentally fit to hold any public office.

Mentally fit - I do not believe it matters whether genetics, experiences, trauma, parenting or personal choices have led us to this place of a fellow who simply blathers about in social media. He has no ability to filter. Delusional disorders is the correct section of DSM 5-TR to be reading and giving consideration. That section, in addition to considering his personality disorder cluster, should be the hub of any diagnostic conversation wheel we use to chat about how best to manage our feelings about him, vis-a-vis his repeated insistence on being vocal on social media.

There is a misperception of who might be considered "mentally ill." What I am referring to is the first defense he threw out to his crowd, "I'm rich!" Is there something about being wealthy that magically inoculates a person against mental disorder? I would offer the converse argument. Mo' money, mo' crazy. You need sage and sound counsel to help you manage your false-bottomed sense of total safety and security while living on this planet.

Donald simply does not know when to shut the f#$k up.

I am reminded of a training video in which Dr. Sal Minuchin was interviewing a patient with disorganized thinking. To characterize just how disturbing it is to the treatment professional to work with these folks day after day, Sal could not restrain himself and uttered, "What are you talking about??" in a most directive manner, hoping to encourage the client to get back on track.

In delusional disorder, there's no thesis, no theme, no specific argument, no path that gets to anywhere. It is walking with a person who is lost in the forest and then finds yet another distraction. Being lost is the entire point of their delusion. It is how they guard against the reality of life. Life breaks through their ordinary protections with ordinariness.

THat's much, much more than they can handle.

The warning we who study the disordered persons and the qualitative/quantitative means by which they've gotten into the swamp they are in, need to heed is in the sheer number of people who are also in that swamp with him, and who came to that swamp, expecting to find a country club swimming pool. His ability to hold them in a promise of prosperity has increased whatever disordered thinking and feeling these folks experienced prior to believing his siren song.

Crazy draws more crazy to itself. There's kinship in delusional status.

Is Donald delusional? I think I agree with that assertion, and I encourage other helpers and human services workers and professionals to see the dead poseys in the hands of their clients, and although you want to be kind and offer unconditional positive regard, keep the truth in your head that no matter what else you hear, those flowers are dead.

Donald is holding out dead flowers to his followers. That's what he's selling them. Dead flowers, purporting to re-animate them and make them alive again...

If you are a realist like I am, then you see how difficult it will be to convince folks who drank his dead flower tea to walk away from believing the delusional reality they've walked through the looking glass and entered.

Below from Tibel:

Click above to enlarge



December 24, 2022

Are Taylor Greene, Fuentes, and millions of Americans with fringe beliefs mentally ill?

Are Taylor Greene, Fuentes, and millions of Americans with fringe beliefs mentally ill? 
By Hal Brown, MSW

Marjorie Taylor Greene, on learning about the beliefs of Nick Fuentes the anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-Black, antisemitic incel who dined with Trump said about him: “I’m worried about kids that would follow him. And that’s a shame. But no, I don’t want to have anything to do with him. They showed me some [of Fuentes'] videos. I could not believe the stuff he says. I mean, it was shocking.”

Read the article which led me to write this essay. It includes Taylor Greene's reaction shown above.

Click above to read article

Excerpts:

In January 2022, Fuentes launched Cozy.tv, a streaming platform that he said would be “anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-Black, [and] antisemitic.” A month after launching the platform, he said women aren't "as rational as men" and should be beaten by their partners. He added a racist twist by saying that Black men understand this...

... Fuentes has also said that he thinks future politicians should take an incel "message to the men and say, ‘Hey men, hey men, vote for me, I’ll destroy feminism [and] ... make it harder for women to become whores [and]... incentivize women to be in monogamous marriages for the long term and to have and raise kids.”

A year ago VICE listed every conspiracy Marjorie Taylor Greene believed in, or said she believed in. Nobody can tell what she and others with fringe beliefs that are demonstrably untrue really believe and what they claim to believe to get attention.

How many beliefs do such people, have to have to be diagnosed as having a delusional disorder or another psychiatric condition?

Consider this article published in The Conversation:

Excerpt:

I found that many QAnon followers revealed – in their own words on social media or in interviews – a wide range of mental health diagnoses, including bipolar disorderdepressionanxiety and addiction.

In court records of QAnon followers arrested in the wake of the Capitol insurrection, 68% reported they had received mental health diagnoses. The conditions they revealed included post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia and Munchausen syndrome by proxy – a psychological disorder that causes one to invent or inflict health problems on a loved one, usually a child, in order to gain attention for themselves. By contrast, 19% of all Americans have a mental health diagnosis.

Consider that in addition to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nick Fuentes two more people in the news, Herschel Walker and very recently George Santos show indications of having a mental illness.

It bears consideration to note that until the MAGA era descriptive colloquial phrases like batshit crazy were't common in descriptions of people in the news. Now they are ubiquitous. Unfortunately using this phase and others like "clown car" and "cray-cray" in a title is clickbait and tells you that you probably won't be reading a serious analysis of someone by a mental health professional.

More serious writers define people with unshakable fringe beliefs as delusional. These days most but not all involve what have come to be called conspiracy theories.

My laptop dictionary has two definitions of delusional. They are very different:

  • characterized by or holding false beliefs or judgments about external reality that are held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, typically as a symptom of a mental conditionhospitalization for schizophrenia and delusional paranoia | he was diagnosed with a delusional disorder
  • based on or having faulty judgment; mistakentheir delusional belief in the project's merits never wavers | I think the guy is being a bit delusional here.
People who fall into the first group need treatment. People in the second group may benefit from re-education. Unfortunately many people in the later group belong to a peer group of people with the same beliefs, QAnon for example, and their only media source of information comes from the far-right media  which gives credence to conspiracy theories.I haven't even gotten into the promotion of The Big Lie which even Trump who started it never believed.

November 9, 2022

Worst case Senate and House go Gop. but assume it is just the House.


Worst case Senate and House go GOP, but let's assume it is just the House. Here's what I think we should expect.

By Hal Brown

If the new House Speaker, who (hate to remind you) would be next in line for the presidency after Vice President Harris, is Kevin McCarthy as seems likely, can't control his caucus expect two years of gridlock as far as legislation and a revenge chaos clown show.

There will be a clamor among the Trumpainiacs like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Goetz to impeach Biden. They may have lost gun-totting Lauren Boebert who was armed and demented. (MSNBC has yet to call the election.)

Greene and Boebert, two classy women... remember this: 


Most of the lunacy won't be on the floor of the House  itself. It will occur in committee hearing rooms where we will see, unless Kevin McCarthy can control the maniacs, efforts to impeach President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary of Homeland SecurityAlejandro Mayorkas. The only cabinet secretary to ever be impeached was under President Ulysses S. Grant. This was William W. Belknap. He was impeached on March 2, 1876, for his role in the trader post scandal.

Of course there will be a major committee  investigation into Hunter Biden although even Trump pretty much gave up trying to demonize him since attacks against him didn't turn out to be a rally crowd pleaser, and they will cheer him for just about anyone he attacks.. 

In a day or two when the final results are in, unless the Democrats hold onto control of the house in which case expect a plethora of lawsuits from losing Republicans all or most of which would be denied in court. It is possible a judge could stay the results of a crucial election for short period of time.

I wouldn't be surprised if Democrats boycott all of these revenge impeachments hearings. The results will all be predetermined and nothing but a chance for the GOP loonies to showboat for Fox News which I doubt would bother giving them extensive live coverage if only because the only breaks for advertisers are during recesses. That is unless the chair decides to cut a deal with Fox and break for commercials every 10 minutes. 

Once the House impeaches, as we all have learned, the determination as to whether or not to remove someone from office goes to the Senate for trial. Since a supermajority would be needed for conviction even if the GOP had a majority of a few votes there's no way any of these people would be convicted so I can't see the Democrats presenting an extensive defense, or even a defense at all.

If they did put together a defense team composed only of members of The Squad I thought this would stick it to the Republicans. While having AOC in the hallowed hall addressing them would really burn their butts, but she's isn't an attorney. The Squad member who is a lawyer is Rashida Tlaib who ironically went to Thomas Cooley School of Law, which is the same law school Michael Cohen went to.



No matter who controls the Senate, if the GOP controls the House and it becomes useless for working on a legislative agenda this would provide plenty of time for Democrats to muster their resources to assure that all of them get reelected. 

They can focus on constituent services, fund raising, planning strategy for the next election, and in districts where they might face major opposition making sure voters understand why they should be reelected.

A few representatives from safe districts where another Democrat would easily win if they didn't run and who would make good presidential, vice presidential, governor, or Senate candidates down the road could also work to elevate their national profiles.

The Democrats have a deep bench of such candidates  but some have negatives that might make a national run difficult, in part because Trump demonized them.  Anyone on the January 6th Committee would probably be ruled out. Others who weren't on the J6 Committee. There are lots to chose from. Katie Porter comes to mind as a standout. She could turn out to be a formidable candidate for national office.








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