June 19, 2023

Donald Trump for Village Snipe Hunter

 

By Hal Brown

If you are reading this on the other platforms I post on directly, namely Booksie which doesn't allow active links, Medium, or Substack, go to my primary host, Google Blogger at halbrown.org where I often post additions and updates which I don't bother putting on the other hosts.


There are some people who say Trump is mentally unfit to hold any elected or appointed office. There are those who say he is so dangerously psychologically impaired and ignorant that the only job he is qualified to hold is that of village idiot.

I beg to differ. 

He is perfectly qualified to be a village snipe hunter.

The qualifications are having a loud mouth, supreme self-confidence, never having been wrong in his entire life, and the uncanny ability to find and destroy those dangerous stink'n snipes threatening to wipe out all the fine upstanding villagers.

Snipe hunters must be ready, willing, and able to do whatever is necessary to find and to eliminate these dangerous snipes.

There are already many villages that already have their own official snipe hunters. Some are large, entire states in fact, some are merely congressional districts. With Trump being unemployed at present some village must be looking for a snipe hunter with his qualifications.

Addendum:

The current definition of snipe (not the actual bird which is known for its cryptic/camouflaging plumage and only hunted with binoculars.)


snipe hunt is a type of practical joke or fool's errand, in existence in North America as early as the 1840s, in which an unsuspecting newcomer is duped into trying to catch an elusive, nonexistent animal called a snipe. Although snipe are an actual family of birds, a snipe hunt is a quest for an imaginary creature whose description varies.

The target of the prank is led to an outdoor spot and given instructions for catching the snipe; these often include waiting in the dark and holding an empty bag or making noises to attract the creature. The others involved in the prank then leave the newcomer alone in the woods to discover the joke. As an American rite of passage, snipe hunting is often associated with summer camps and groups such as the Boy Scouts. In France, a similar joke is called "hunting the dahut".


In common parlance and as used in this blog a snipe is a person or thing that does not exist but is dangerous. Some examples of snipes are as follows:

  • anyone who believes, let alone dares to publicly say, that Biden was elected in a fair election
  • communists and Marxists who, if they could, would send you to some unspecified gulag
  • groomers who want to force your children into changing their gender
  • male entertainers who dress as women and try to turn your children gay
  • people who say that Pizzagate, the theory which claimed there were emails which contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic officials and U.S. restaurants with an alleged human sex trafficking and child sex ring, was a made-up conspiracy 
  • teachers, librarians, politicians, and others who want  to warp your mind and your children's minds by telling them what they say are lies about the country's history of racial injustice (and worse)
  • people who advocate for the efficacy of vaccines
  • people who say climate change is both real and dangerous
  • anyone who questions the American right to arm themselves with assault rifles
  • people who say that the plot to kidnap children to extract Adrenochrome (claimed to be an elixir of youth), which is being harvested by liberal elites from the blood of kidnapped children is a delusional lie
  • people who deny that there are Jewish space lasers causing wildfires
  • people who believe that the vast majority of Muslim-Americans are good people, and the same for people who want to immigrate to the U.S. from Latin America.
  • almost last, but not least, anyone who thinks being "woke" is a good thing
  • really last and definitely not least, anyone who thinks Donald Trump isn't an infallible god to whom man's laws don't apply
Full disclosure: By these definitions, since I am a retired psychotherapist who believes there is ample evidence to consider Trump to be a dangerous psychopath and a delusional grandiose narcissist incapable of empathy so impulsive that if he became president again he'd turn the country into a fascist dictatorship where his first word of business would be to wreak vengeance on his detractors, there is no doubt I'd be considered a snipe.

Related:

Click above to read
Excerpt:

Hours after pleading not guilty in federal court, Trump told a crowd of his supporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that Biden, “together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy.” He added, “If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me.”

Other Republicans have piled on with similar messaging. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last week took to Twitter to lambast what she called the “CORRUPT AND WEAPONIZED COMMUNISTS DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED DOJ.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s closest rival for the GOP presidential nomination, has argued the U.S. risks falling victim to “woke” ideology, which he has defined in interviews as a form of “cultural Marxism.” 

Click above to read Salon article
Excerpt:

QAnon is still growing (in 2021, an alarming 16 percent of Americans said they believe its core tenets, according to a 2022 PRRI study), pushing the idea that secret Satanists within the government are both sacrificing children (because the bad guy is always secretly sacrificing children) and trying to undermine your personal safety and take away your (unspecified) rights. Rippling outward from there, an even larger sample of the population seems to be stuck on the idea that children's books and history classrooms hide a secret evil that's coming for our children.




June 18, 2023

Why is anybody surprised that the worse Trump's legal troubles get the more his cult loves him, gives him money, and contemplate violence?

 



By Hal Brown

Anyone who follows experts like neuroscientist Bobby Azarian, whose latest article in Raw Story is  "A neuroscientist explains why Trump extremists will grow violent as Election 2024 approaches"or read articles like  "The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists" (Scientific American 2021) knows the scientific reasons why Trump has such an iron grip on members of his cult.

Azarian explains:

Terror management theory is particularly relevant to current political events because it provides a scientific explanation for tribalism. The theory suggests that in the face of threat or fear, we bolster our worldviews, and become more ideological. We also become more tribal, which will strengthen our support for like-minded others, while at the same time making us more prone to aggression toward those who are not like us, and who do not share our worldview.

 They also know, as Azarian explains, how dangerous some of them may be:

This suggests that an atmosphere of existential fear would simultaneously promote aggression while strengthening support for Trump, who regularly projects a “strongman” image and suggests violence as a remedy to political matters. 

This is a very scary combination of psychological effects. For this reason we must be aware of this problem, which will become increasingly salient as the 2024 presidential election begins to heat up.
Azarian concludes with a plea for empathy, using our knowledge, and optimism as follows:

So, we must be empathetic during these times, but we must also be vigilant. If we stay on the current trajectory of increasing polarization, we can almost be certain that a whole new level of unrest is headed our way. Now the question is whether we have the ability to use this knowledge to avert the coming train wreck. But I’m an optimist, and I think if we can predict something ahead of time, we can figure out how to prevent it. That is precisely why science has been such a powerful force for human civilization, and it’s time we start applying that knowledge to solving the existential threat that is the culture war in America.

What puzzles me is why so many rational people are surprised, shocked even, that the more is revealed about how Trump defied the law and put national security at risk and now may face the sword of Lady Justice for what he did, the more members of his cult support him. For example:


At a subliminal level have all of these people bought into the illusion of Telfon Don, of Superman Trump, of Rambo Trump, on bulletproof Trump riding a tank into battle?

From members of the general public who zealously support him no matter what he's done or how outlandish his behavior is to members of Congress and Republicans running for president it seems as if they fall into one of two groups. The first is the group who believe he is the superhuman being he portrays himself. The more imperiled he becomes for many the more enthusiastic their support of him becomes.  The second group is composed of the politicians who are scared shitless of him and the voting block he controls. In private they may wish he'd just disappear (see Would Republicans support Trump in 2024 if he's convicted of crimes? They're split, NBC News).

Group two is afraid of group one. They are hitching their political wagons to horses that have been grazing in locoweed.









June 17, 2023

On wanting a president who loves me, hates the people I hate, and makes me feel really, really good about myself.

 On wanting a president who loves me, hates the people I hate, and makes me feel really, really good about myself.


By Hal Brown


Let’s get this out of the way. I don’t think President Biden personally loves me. I don’t think he hates the people I hate because he’s a better person than I am. I think to the extent he hates, he hates what the people I hate believe and what they want the country to become. 

 

When I see him on TV I feel admiration for him but he doesn’t make me feel good about myself. The closest to this is feeling that he is speaking for me.


The closest thing I’ve done to wearing a hat showing to the world how much I admire him is wearing the Ray-Ban 3025 aviator sunglasses which Biden wears.



My partner bought them for me. Being about his age, I’d like to believe they make me look as badass in mine as I think he does in his. Dream on, Hal.


When I watch videos of the attendees at Trump rallies and see interviews with them I am struck by the ways they demonstrate their feelings for him. The minimalists sport the ubiquitous red MAGA baseball caps with either the four letters or the words spelled out. 


No MAGA hat is too big. 



Giving Trump credit for popularizing four letters which started as an abbreviation and became a word that took on a life on its own here’s what Wikipedia has to say:


Make America Great Again" or MAGA[a] is an American political slogan which was popularized by Donald Trump during his successful 2016 presidential campaign. The slogan became a pop culture phenomenon, seeing widespread use and spawning numerous variants in the arts, entertainment and politics, being used by those who support and oppose Trump's presidency. Since its popularization in the 1980s, the slogan used by Ronald Reagan originally has been accused by some of being a loaded phrase. Multiple journalists, scholars, and commentators have called the slogan racist, regarding it as dog-whistle politics and coded language.


Of course at rallies no Trump outfit is too garish. 



No Trump flag is too outlandishly worshipful and bellicose.


Those wearing the most extreme outfits may hope they’ll have their pictures make the news or that they will get them interviewed by TV reporters.


What all these Trump supporters have in common in addition to their off-the-charts high regard for him, and in many instances their belief that he is as close to an infallible deity that a human being can become, is that when these people gather together they feel a bond with each other.


They are with “their people” which means that they not only all believe Trump is their god but that he, or perhaps "He" is a more appropriate way to use the personal pronoun, loves them and hates the people they hate. He makes them feel special. 


Even those who seem to follow his rallies around the country wearing t-shirts that say “blacks for Trump” can feel good about having Trump’s rally organizers make sure they are given seats behind him so they can be on TV. They are members of a minuscule minority of Blacks and it isn’t even clear whether they are aware of, or care about, Trump's actual beliefs about racial equality and his policies on addressing racial injustice.


Consider this:


The photo is from this article: 


You can easily find photos of many these people by doing a web image search. 


You can even find a few photos of men wearings t-shirts saying “gays for Trump." If I could interview any one person from a Trump rally I would like to interview one of these people. See Wikipedia about Gays For Trump.


Of course Trump hasn’t jumped all over the anti-woke agenda and engaged in the demonization of the LGBTQ+ community like DeSantis, but still Trump can hardly be considered a friend of this mostly Democratic voting group.


If I ever go to a Joe Biden rally you won't see me wearing a MAGA hat though I might have a Biden button on my shirt. I will, however, be wearing my Tilley hat and sporting my badass Biden Ray-Bans.




June 16, 2023

If coal represented ideas for my blogs and it was Christmas and Trump was Santa, he's dumping a sleigh load of creative coal down my chimney

Images from Wikipedia Commons, bottom modified by author adding coal to Santa's bag of gifts (look closely)

By Hal Brown, who doesn't even have a chimney and is Jewish...

When I get up in the morning I rarely have an idea for a blog entry. Trump's behavior often gives me one. This morning just looking at Raw Story gave me today's idea.

First I read 

'A deeply weird person': Morning Joe panelist ridicules Trump's newly revealed obsession

Watch first minute

"In addition to being a bad person, Donald Trump is a deeply weird person," he blurted as the entire panel burst into laughter. "Remember that point in the indictment where he's talking to Evan Corcoran, his lawyer, you know, about the 'pluck 'em out' conversation, and he's saying, 'I don't want anybody going through my boxes. I don't want you going through my boxes'?"

"It is almost a Gollum in 'Lord of the Rings moment,'" he continued. "He has a hoarding instinct about the documents. Some weird security blanket, some sort of -- it boosts his ego and reminds him that he actually somehow became president of the United States."

If you don't remember Gollum's line in the "Lord of the Rings" movie:

Click above to play
I didn't make this:


The next story I read was:

'Born with a very small brain': Trump trashes former chief of staff who called him 'scared' of jail

This article refers to a Trump Truth Social post, to which I added an insert below which I posted in comment to that article:

Click to enlarge, does not go to Truth Social


I won't torture you with yet another blog about Trump's psychopathology. If you missed it, I did this yesterday here:



 If you're curious, do the web search for "Trump mentally ill" and add my name.


I took a break from writing this to put together the illustration on the top of the page and then went back to Raw Story and saw two new stories on the top of their page:


Article one here and article two here.


From yesterday:

Click to read article (my addition to image)


What does it say about someone facing serious felony charges that could result in imprisonment that he acts in such self-defeating ways? Is he weird or mentally ill? I believe that in Trump's case there's an overlap.

Most of you know about, or have read the best selling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. There's another book some of you are no doubt familiar with. This is "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by  neurologist Oliver Sacks.


 I'm not suggesting that Trump has a  highly unusual and bizarre neurological condition like the patients in Sacks' book, but his behavior is definitely weird. 

I think the yet to be written book which would describe Trump could be titled "The Weird, Bizarre, Self-Defeating, Dangerous, Disastrous Case of the Man Who Mistook Himself for God."


Addendum:

Trump is called lots of names by his critics. For example, Rick Wilson of The Lincoln Project just called him a low, loathsome, corrupt, venal, mendacious scumbag here.. Idiot is another example:

Click to read article

"Donald Trump looks like an idiot on this one," said contributor Elise Jordan. "He had a chance, he had a do-over, couldn't bring himself to do it. At the end of the day, if you're arguing about the refs, if you're arguing about the DOJ and FBI, you're losing."

What does idiot mean?

An idiot, in modern use, is a stupid or foolish person.

'Idiot' was formerly a technical term in legal and psychiatric contexts for some kinds of profound intellectual disability where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot guard themself against common physical dangers. The term was gradually replaced by 'profound mental retardation', which has since been replaced by other terms.[1] Along with terms like moronimbecileretard and cretin, its use to describe people with mental disabilities is considered archaic and offensive.[2] Moral idiocy refers to a moral disability. From Wikipedia

What does an idiot look like? You can see the photo Raw Story used above. This is the illustration in Wikipedia. 
Here's another (see Amazon)







Trump, Miss Manner's he ain't. By Hal M. Brown -- When it come to common etiquette Trump doesn't give two shits about respecting the feelings and sensibilities of other people or countries.

Most people, even Donald Trump, have probably heard of Miss Manners. They may not know this is the pen name of Judith Martin. I didn’t know ...